Captain America: Sentinal of Liberty
by Danrilor
Summary: The world now knows that Steve Rogers is Captain America, but who is Steve Rogers? A Super Hero? A Super Soldier? or just an ordinary man that lived in extraordinary times? COMPLETE STORY!
1. Prologue

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

Synopsis: The world now knows that Steve Rogers is the man behind Captain America's Mask, but who is Steve Rogers? A Super Soldier? A Super Patriot? The perfect hero? Or just an ordinary man living in extraordinary times? The world knows Captain America, but Cap confides in one person the true story of how he became the sentinel of liberty that we know today.

Category: Marvel

Genre: Drama/Action/Adventure

Rating: PG13 for dealing with issues such as sex, war, violence, death, grief, and worst of all politics

Author's Notes: I have tried to keep the story as close to the Canon as I can, but since even the Canon writers can't do that I have freelanced a bit. Not any more than John Byrne or Kurt Busiek would, though. Some of the recent gobblygook and junky RETCONs from the Mark Waid run has been disregarded. This is my first Fanfic so R&R would be appreciated.

**Prologue:**

For years afterward those that saw it would still tell the story. It would change with time, of course, as all stories do. Sometimes truth can depend greatly upon your point of view. These were only the details, though, and if you strip away those details then you find that the spirit of the story remains there, unchanged. The onlookers that had surrounded the building had spent hours looking on in worry. The police had failed to gain entrance to the convention center. Both a conventional raid and a SWAT assault team had been thwarted, and it was a miracle that none of the hostages had been harmed. These were not mere terrorists holding these hostages after all, but rather powerful superhumans who were secure in their power and in their abilities. The most arrogant of criminals. The Force of Nature, as they called themselves saw this as much as a protest as a hostage situation. For hours they had held these politicians against their will, forcing them to listen to their version of events. The security forces and secret service agents had been no use against the Force and their paramilitary support group. Dead and wounded agents littered the ground. The Democratic National Convention had ground to a halt amidst the assault, and now the nation looked on. They looked on and would never forget what they saw.

"For four years every bit of progress we had made toward saving this planet for the next generation has been rolled back by a callous administration, and you gutless participants... you so-called opposition party... HAVE DONE NOTHING!" Aquifer screamed into the microphone.

Once upon a time he had been a two bit super crook known as the Water Wizard. Then he had his soul roasted by the hellfire from a demon that called itself Zarathos... or Ghost Rider. He had never been the same , and had thrown his life into the environmental cause as if it could help wash away all the wrong he had ever done in his life. The delegates and their political masters alike cringed before him, and that selfish part of him that made him a criminal in the first place reveled in it. He was not thinking of what he was saying as the diatribe continued. All that he could think of was the images of Prince William Sound, of Three Mile Island and Love Canal. The words came by themselves, but it was the images that stuck with him. The image of a ruined world incapable of sustaining life littered with the skeletons of those that had only worried about how to make their next million dollars. Behind him, Firefly, Earthmaster, and Cyclone looked on with their arms crossed. They cared in the same way that he did, but were not as able to make their point with words. All of them were people of action, but it was the former Water Wizard that most shined in the spotlight.

It didn't matter anyway, because there was one thing that they had not considered.

When the wall of the convention center burst in, they had at first thought that it was another pathetic attempt by the police to rescue the delegates. The last attempt, with tear gas, had been especially amusing when Cyclone had used his wind power to sent it back out into the rubbernecking crowd. They were mistaken, and they knew it immediately when they saw the silhouettes of the figures that were walking through the smoke. No... not walking. Even those that were actually traveling forward by the locomotion of their own two feet could not be considered to be walking as much as they were striding. Some of them were flying, but all of their profiles were unmistakable. A gleaming figure of red and gold. A huge, broad shouldered warrior with a winged helm. A man that was easily 12 feet tall, and seeming to grow more by the instant. A flying woman with gossamer wings. Between them all, striding before them all, was the one figure that first cleared the cloud of dust and came clearly into view. He was not the tallest of them... being a merely six foot two. He was not the mightiest of them, but he was the most imposing nonetheless. When the bright illumination of the convention center's stadium lighting hit the shield he carried, he almost seemed to glow with red white and blue brilliance. The assembled Force, and even their paramilitaries, could not help but take a step back at the sight of the figure.

"Captain America!" Aquifer gasped into the microphone.

"The Avengers!" Cyclone screamed in an urgent, uniquely French squeal.

"Right on both counts!" The commanding voice boomed from the chest of the red white, and blue gladiator.

"What are you doing here!" Aquifer screamed in dismay "Can't you see what we are doing? Can't you see we are saving the world?"

Captain America looked at the dead men, looked back to the "activists" on stage, and didn't deem that worthy of a response.

"Give yourself up peacefully, and I promise you that you won't be harmed." He said with more compassion than these people deserved as the forms of his team mates fanned out to surround the stage "Otherwise, I can't make you any promises."

"Surrender?" Water Wizard sputtered. "We should be asking for your surrender! You are outnumbered, outgunned, and outmatched."

"We're always outnumbered." Cap said confidently, slowly advancing "I'm not going to waste another minute negotiating with you, because this is not a negotiation."

"Forces of Nature! ATTACK!" Aquifer screamed to his compatriots, but they barely had time to react before the Avengers were on top of them.

Cyclone attempted to use his wind powers, only to find them usurped by the hulking form before him, a glowing hammer that gave him more power over weather than Cyclone could possibly imagine. Thor slapped him like you or I would slap the wrist of a disobedient four year old trying to stick his finger in a light socket, but still rendered him unconscious. Iron Man hovered in front of Firefly, unimpressed with the blazing sheet of flame that was rushing round him like it wasn't even there. One repulsor blast put her down. Hank Pym, in Yellowjacket garb but grown to Giant Man size, picked up the former Plant man in the palm of his hand and punched him through the stage while the Wasp blasted the still gabbing Water Wizard with a bio electric sting that could have dropped a charging rhinoceros. The so called Force of nature didn't stand a chance, but it wasn't this deliberate and flawless assault by Earth's Mightiest heroes that captured the nation's imagination that night.

It was the image of the paramilitary troops of the Force throwing down their weapons and walking toward Captain America with their hands up. He had not needed to make a speech. He hadn't needed to throw a punch. All he had needed to do was look at them without the slightest hint of fear, and they knew that being outnumbered meant nothing to this man. The image would grace the covers of Time and Newsweek the next week, Captain America and his shining shield impassively accepting the surrender of the terrorists that had nearly brought a nation to its knees. As usual, there would be bickering about the amount of force used. For the hard liners there would never be enough. To the hard liners Dirty Harry Callahan was a wuss. To the ACLU crowd, the amount of force the Avengers used was beyond excessive. None of that mattered, however, because not one of those Avengers would ever read those articles. They had been doing this for years, and were the very best there was. There wasn't a soul in the world who could say differently and expect anyone to agree with them. The Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, were in a class by themselves.

So was the man that led them.

* * *

There are two sides to every story, however.

What the nation did not know, and what they would never know, was that the perfectly executed plan had gone wrong. They would never know that Captain America was not supposed to stand there before the paramilitaries. He was supposed to take them down, but he had not. They had seen his rigid form just standing there and mistook it for an ultimate nonchalant confidence. Ninety percent of communication is nonverbal, and his body language had definitely said "you mess with me and you're messing with the best." His stare had frozen them in their tracks, and failed to make them realize that the exact same thing had happened to him. Yet is was not because of them that he had frozen, it was what he saw behind them. There were a hundred faces visible on that convention floor, but he had locked in on one of them and his heart had skipped a beat. Then two beats. Then he had wondered if it was ever going to start again. Brown, curly hair. Soft green eyes. Unmistakable features. There was no doubt in his mind when he had locked eyes with her.

Bernie Rosenthal.

He had played it off well, not only to the cameras but to his own team mates. It would not do to worry them, after all. He sensed that they were dissatisfied with his explanation of what had happened, but if there was one thing that he had learned in his long years it was that you couldn't argue with results. The mission had been accomplished, and with less bloodshed than if he had dived into the fray and started kicking in teeth. In the end that was all that mattered. At least, that was all that mattered to Captain America. As the Captain walked into his austere little room in Avengers mansion, though, there was a nagging voice in the back of his head that questioned what would have happened if his inaction had given the men the opportunity to gun down the hostages, including the beautiful face that his eyes were locked onto. What would have happened, what would he have done, if Bernie died in front of his eyes. This voice was a voice he knew well, because it was his voice. It was the voice of reason. It was the voice of Steve Rogers. He pulled of his mask to reveal Steve Roger's features as he walked into the bathroom, trying not to look in the mirror as he did it. HE took off his read gloves and threw them on the ground before he turned on the faucet and relentlessly splashed cold water on his face.

"Get a hold of yourself, Rogers." he said between splashes.

Slowly he raised his eyes to look at the expression that looked back at him from the mirror. He had found it harder and harder to look himself in the eyes lately, which was just another of a hundred things that he talked about with no one.

"Who are you?" He asked his reflection softly.

The people who had seen him that night could have no idea that the supremely confident Avenger they had seen could ever ask himself that question. There was no way that they could know. For just as there are two sides to every story... there are also two sides to every man. Even a man like Steve Rogers. Even a man like Captain America. For when Steve Rogers looked in the mirror these days he never saw the invincible super soldier that he had become. He never saw the Sentinel of Liberty that was admired the world over. He didn't see the Living Legend of World War Two, or the leader of the Avengers. All he saw was a skinny, scarecrow of a boy with fear in his eyes and dirt on his face. He did not splash the cold water on his face to wash away his cold sweat, although it did that job as well. He splashed it on to try and get rid of that dirt.

No matter how much he tried, it never came off.

**Next: A Boy named Steve**

**_How much do you know about Captain America's childhood? How much do you REALLY want to know? Read on next week true believer! _**


	2. A boy named Steve

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Chapter one:**

**A boy named Steve**

The soldier began the day as he did every day, by hopping out of bed before the alarm clock even went off. It was four in the morning and he had only gone to sleep at midnight, but his body had told him that he had slept enough. His bedroom was sparse and Spartan, almost military in its utility. A simple bed with a thin mattress and a footlocker that held most of his personal belongings, such as they were. A wall locker where he secured his uniform and shield, as well as other equipment and tools of the trade. Some people called his uniform a "costume" but he had never preferred the term. He had worn many uniforms over the years, but the latest one had been manufactured by Stark Enterprises out of a combination of micro mail mesh and unstable molecules. It was, for the most part, bulletproof, fire proof, and insulated from electrical charges. It was warm in the wintertime and cool in the summertime, a marvel made possible by the genius of Reed Richards and Tony Stark. He was told once that it cost more than a Lexus to manufacture, and Tony had given him three of them. He had refused them at first until Tony began listing the times that he had saved his life, saved the nation, and saved the world. It made him feel guilty, and he wished that every American soldier was able to have one like it. It was 2004, and even 55 years after his war had ended he was still just a soldier. The only decoration on his wall was a wooden case holding a tri-folded American Flag.

The old soldier looked in the mirror as he brushed his teeth. He still didn't look a day over 35, and there were days that he wished that he felt like it. His body was a network of scars, from the war and the battles since. He had suffered injuries that would have crippled a normal man, but more often than not fought through them. Piledriver had broken his jaw during a battle with the Wrecking Crew, and he had proceeded to kick his ass in silence. He had both of his legs broken on Mount Olympus, so he had fought with his arms. Mr. Hyde had crushed his shoulder into powder, so he had driven the other one into his gut and knocked the wind out of him. The time he would never forget out of all the times he had faced the Hulk was when he had tried to choke the beast into unconsciousness. He had strangled Banner so hard that the choke hold broke his wrist, but he had kept squeezing. Even when the sarcastic reply came from the half-closed windpipe "Why, Captain, I didn't know you cared." The truth was he did care, and that is why he fought so hard. So much harder than anyone else ever would. He had no special healing power or bullet proof skin to protect him, only his courage. Through the pain the serum kept him going.

He emerged from the small bathroom showered and clean shaven. Avenger's Mansion was still quiet this time of the morning. Heroes that had often fought long into the night on their various adventures slept the sleep of the just. They all had their own adventures, he knew, up until the moment that they heard the words "Avengers Assemble!" and came together. They were the A-team. The varsity of Superheroes. He didn't have any of their powers, but for some reason they had accepted him for all of these years. What's more, they had given him a special place at their table. They all looked to him. He would never forget the time when Quasar had told him that he didn't feel worthy of being called one of Earth's Mightiest Heroes. He had given the young hero a pep talk, but he had really wanted to shake some sense into him _You can fly to other galaxies, have been given the title "Protector of the Universe" and have the cosmic power to go toe to toe with the Silver Surfer or Thanos... AND YOU ARE TELLING ME YOU AREN'T WORTHY! _He wondered how his Drill Instructors would have handled Wendell. Events like that were what kept him training like he was this morning. 10 mile run in less than 50 minutes. 20 sets of ten of each weight exercise in the Gym, many of which were at a weight that would be an Olympic weightlifter's max press. A grueling hour long Gymnastics session. By 0700, when Jarvis brought his lunch, he had done enough physical activity to kill or cripple a normal man. It never seemed to be enough.

"Is there anything else I can do for you, Sir?" Jarvis asked with his typical crispness.

"No, thank you, Jarvis." The soldier said, looking him right in the eye. He always did this, even though many of the Avengers would not meet the man's gaze while they were talking to him. Many of them were used to having servants. Jan, Hank, Tony, and many others had grown up wealthy. Thor, Hercules, and Namor were royalty even! Steve was not, even if the Avengers treated him like he was. He missed those days when he and Hawkeye would sneak into the kitchen to play Poker with Jarvis while the rest of the Avengers were hobnobbing in the Parlor. Jarvis, stripped of his Butler manner, was quite the British card shark. Hawkeye always cheated. That left him taking the most losses and being the butt of the most jokes.

"Steve?" He heard a quiet voice coming from the table where he was eating his breakfast. He looked down and saw Ant Man standing by his Orange Juice.

"Scott? What is it?"

"Shhhhh. I'm small with my speaker turned down so that nobody can hear us. I need to talk to you."

"Jump up on my shoulder." Steve said and continued eating.

Scott Lang leapt up onto Captain America's shoulder and looked right and left before he continued.

"How did you do it? Why did you do it?" He asked.

"What?"

"Go public. Let everybody know your secret identity?"

"I had to let all these terrorists know that I am just an American Soldier, not a personification of America."

"But you are... in more ways than you think!"

"I'm just a soldier."

"What about your friends? What about your family?"

"The Avengers are my only friends and family, and we can take care of ourselves. We take care of our own."

"I could never do what you did, Steve. When that manic tried to kill my Daughter... the thought of always having that over my head..."

"Do you want to know the truth, Scott?"

"What is that?"

"There is no Steve Rogers anymore. There is only Captain America. Steve Rogers and everyone he cared about died a long time ago, I just took a long time to figure that out."

Scott looked up into a pair of sad blue eyes that, from his perspective, seemed larger than life. The sadness in them seemed like it as well. Ever since the World Trade Center he had been like this. Would he ever be the same? He had come back to them, but would he stay with them? These are the things that he wanted to ask him the most, and the things that he couldn't ask.

"Sir?" Jarvis cleared his throat from the entrance.

"Yes Jarvis?" He replied, feeling Ant-man jump down from his shoulder.

"There is a Bernadette Rosenthal here to see you."

"Bernie." Steve said almost under his breath.

"Should I send the young lady in, sir?"

"Let her in, Jarvis."

What could Bernie possibly want? He had enough problems with Sharon and the thoughts of the Atlantean girl he had... been with. Women were the last thing on his mind right now. He hadn't even thought about Rachael in months. Bernie had been buried even deeper. He hoped that she was not in trouble. It had been well known at one time that Steve Rogers was her fiancé. If someone had shot their mouth off about that to the wrong person... maybe Scott was right about the decision that he had made. Maybe it was selfish and thoughtless. Bernie Rosenthal had been everything in his life once. Now, he had nearly forgotten all about her. Forgotten what revealing his secret might do to her.

"Steve!" She said without animosity as she crossed the room to him.

Jarvis had swept away the remains of his breakfast. Steve stood as she approached, suddenly aware of the state of his dress. Workout trunks and a muscle shirt might look good in bodybuilding mags but he was sure they were not proper wear to greet a guest in. He had been so shocked at hearing of her visit that he wasn't thinking of that. Then again, she had seen him naked many times so it was probably just false modesty going through his head. So sure and steady when facing down the Red Skull or Dr Doom, the oncoming brunette made his heart thump a conga beat. She looked good, so very good. What should he say? Should he extend his hand? Should he...

She solved the problem for him by hugging him, without a trace of hesitation, and he hugged her back.

"Oh, Steve." She said, still looking over his shoulder in the embrace.

"It's so good to see you." He said, hoping that he didn't sound robotic.

"It was so brave what you did! I've come by so many times wanting to tell you that, but you haven't been here! You've been on so many missions taking care of so many crisis situations that I thought that I would never get to tell you!"

"Brave..." Steve said.

"Brave! I know that you are the walking talking picture of bravery, but I'm so proud of you! You've opened up to the entire country and they still haven't stopped talking about it."

"Bernie..."

"That's why I'm here! I'm finally able to tell people that I knew all along, and everybody is seeing me differently. Business is picking up at my practice and my clients are top drawer. No more Stane international and Fisk imports calling up, but I could do without those anyway! I've gotten cases with Richmond enterprises, Oracle international, and that's just the beginning!"

She was gushing, but as she finally pulled back from the hug and looked in his eyes she trailed off as if choked. He wasn't happy for her. He wasn't happy at all. An hour ago he was pounding a heavy bag until the stuffing fell out of it and the chain broke. Anger turned to violence which became destruction. Then anger was gone. For now. Now there was nothing left but the rest of the day. Everything seemed to make sense then. Nothing made sense now.

"Bernie..." he said "I wished that you wouldn't tell anybody that you knew me."

"Steve... you're not making any sense. I'm not your girlfriend anymore, so it isn't like the Red Skull is going to try to kill me again. We had this conversation way back after that first time. We haven't been together in years... its just... it is good not to have to keep the secret anymore. Isn't it? Don't you feel relived?"

"I don't feel anything." He said, extracting himself from her embrace.

He turned his back on her and walked toward a pair of comfortable couches.

"Sit down." He said, hoping that it didn't sound like an order. He had been barking orders so long, from the battlefields of Europe to the far reaches of the Kree empire, that it was second nature to him. He was a man used to having his commands followed.

She sat down opposite him and looked concerned. It was that same look that Scott had given him earlier, and Jarvis had been giving him all week. Jan and Hank too. All of them that had that perceptive nature, but all of them afraid to ask that simple question that was the first thing to Bernie's lips.

"What is it Steve, What's wrong?"

Those words were like a torpedo hitting a dam. If he were not a man from another era he would have started crying. But real men don't cry, he told himself, no matter what. Especially not in front of a woman.

"I don't know who Steve Rogers is, Bernie."

"What?" She seemed shocked.

"What good is it to tell people my real name when it is just a name? It isn't a person anymore. Just an image."

"I know who you are, Steve. You are the finest man I've even known..."

"When I knew you it was different. I think it was the hotline that started it all. You were there. I was getting calls 24 hours a day and seven days a week all over the country. I would go and help, but I could never do enough. Then the government took that away from me, and the uniform. Gave it to someone else, and I just ran away. I didn't know who I was, so I put on another uniform and kept on doing what I was doing. I got it back, and I was all right again for a while, but you were gone and Steve Rogers was gone with you. I died, came back, died again and came back again. The Government took my uniform again and kicked me out of the country to boot. I got it back, but by then I didn't even know who Captain America was anymore. I was just... going through the motions."

"Steve..." Bernie had started crying for him.

"I'm still just going through the motions, Bernie. I am taking everything a day at a time but I've seen too much and done so much. I feel so old and I can't tell anyone, can't show a bit of weakness. I... felt something for a while... with a woman... and she..." Steve couldn't continue.

"I killed a man, Bernie. I killed him with my bare hands." It was the only thing he could think to tell her. He couldn't tell her about the naked blue skin, the sea like motion of the lovemaking, or the salty taste of the lips under hair brushed with sand. He couldn't tell her about the blood, or the screaming, or what it brought back in him. Where it came from, or who's responsibility it was. The leering Red Skull had almost destroyed the whole country from within. How would anybody feel the slightest bit of pity for the broken heart of one old soldier.

"Why are you telling me this, Steve?" She said.

"Because I can't tell anybody else. I can't tell them the rest either. I was with you but I never told you either. They all only know the comic book version, but they've never asked about the war. Or before the war. Everybody had a picture in their head of who I am, because that is the image that I have put out there for them, but they don't know the truth."

"Your actions have always spoken louder than your words, Steve. As eloquent as those words are." She said with a smile. "Do you need to tell someone who you really are, Steve? You can tell me. You can trust me."

Steven Grant Rogers heard the ring of truth in her words, and knew that if he didn't tell her the story now it might never be told. How could she know, how could any of them know, that all of this started with a skinny, gawky little boy named Steve?

* * *

Bernadette Rosenthal had not always been a high priced lawyer with her eyes clearly focused on success. She had only recently graduated from law school, in fact. When she had seen Steve Rogers for the first time all those years ago she was a post-grad dropout without any direction in life. Since she didn't want to go to law school like her father wanted or marry a millionaire like her mother wanted she had no idea what she wanted for herself. Steve Rogers, for better or for worse, had changed that forever. They became friends, then lovers, partners, fiancés, and now… who knew? They could have been something, that much was true. That was the past. But it seemed that was exactly the trouble. The past was tearing Steve apart. Something he wouldn't or couldn't say. As they walked through central park, she waited for him to say what that was. They talked about old times, and friends dearly missed. Good old Sam Wilson, Arnie Roth, Jack Monroe, and a dozen others. It all felt like they were skirting the issue. None of that was the problem. They had been through all of that together, and none of it was a mystery to her. This was something that he insisted that nobody knew.

They entered the section of Central Park called Freedom's Rest, and suddenly she knew why they had walked here. Standing in the center of the small fenced-in plaza stood a twelve foot tall bronze statue of Captain America with a bald eagle resting on his arm. The stern and jutting jaw was complete with the unique cleft in the chin that gave his profile such gravity. She remembered reading somewhere that the cast had been molded by Alicia Masters, and for a moment could imagine the blind sculptress' slender hands caressing Steve's face. It prompted a moment of irrational bile-refluxing envy that almost matched the occasion of her meeting with that pink-haired slut he had dated on the rebound. Oh, how she had tired so hard to be polite to that trash. What ever happened to her? It was shortly after that meeting that this monument had been dedicated. Steve was missing and presumed dead, and the country had mourned. That was before the country had found out what it was really like to mourn.

"What do you think of it?" Bernie said, breaking the silence and pushing away her thoughts of Alicia Masters, Rachael Leighton, and death.

"I think it is heinous." Steve finally said.

It had been the last response she was expecting.

"I am surprised that it hasn't been destroyed by some Super Villain or disaster after all this time. There have been times when I wished that it had been."

"It… it is just a monument to your…"

"They just dedicated a national monument in Washington DC that is the only one that I will ever need… the one for all the veterans of the war. I was only one soldier in it, and I got a monument before the rest of them. It… was never right. They were dead for 50 years and I was only presumed dead for a couple of months."

He seemed thoroughly miserable.

"Steve… you are so very important to so many people."

"So were they."

"Is this why you are feeling the way that you are? Survivor's Guilt?"

"No."

"Then what?"

Steve seemed ready to say something, then stopped and bit his bottom lip. Hard. He looked up at the statue and then looked at Bernie. She drew closer to him and put one arm around his waist. He did the same and they looked at the monument together. Sunlight glinted off the bronze and somehow Bernie found herself picking it apart. The body of the statue did not do justice to the man that she was holding against her. _I guess that is one thing Alicia never got the chance to feel._

"You've done so much, Steve. You've saved the country and the world and you don't have anything to feel guilty about."

"I don't feel guilty." Steve said "I feel alone."

"What do you mean?"

"They're all gone, Bernie. Gone in body or gone in mind, but gone."

"Who?"

"My generation." Steve said "There are nothing left of them but monuments… and me. Nothing I can ever do will bring them back."

"What are you saying, Steve?"

"I've loved too long, Bernie. Lived too long and seen too much. I've lived long enough." He said in a straightforward tone, looking up at the face of the monument.

Bernie was horrified.

"I… I shouldn't have said that." Steve said when he saw her reaction. "I didn't mean that. I meant to say that… it is this life I'm living that I don't want to live anymore. But I know I can't quit. There… isn't any quit in me."

Bernie tried to say something, but was stunned by what he had said. He continued to regard the monument, but she had totally forgotten it was there.

"Maybe we should sit down." She finally said in her best Lawyer/Client privilege voice. She felt like she was playing a role, but then again aren't we all?

She looked at him as he sat down on a nearby bench, and it seemed like he was playing a role too. He was dressed in navy blue slacks, baby blue dress shirt, and a black tie. He was carrying his old battered portfolio case, but she knew that there was not a single drawing in it. There was only a battered yet indestructible shield. This wasn't the Steve she had known. This wasn't the sensitive comic book artist that would throw on a costume, get into character, and save the world. This was that character wearing Steve's skin, and not very comfortable doing it. Doing it for her benefit. Who knew how long it had been since the last time he wore those dress shoes?

They sat down carefully, not desiring to sit in anything sticky like discarded gum or worse. He looked so very tired to her, in ways more than physical. He had gone through the wringer while they were together, but had never seemed quite this wrung out.

"Tell me about them, Steve." She said.

"Who?"

"The ones that you miss." She hoped maybe that talking about them would make them come alive for him again. If only for a moment he could step off of this dark path he was walking… maybe he wouldn't go back.

"It is a hard story to tell, Bernie." Steve said "I don't even know where to start."

"Start at the beginning." She said with a smile.

It all seemed so obvious for her, but where was the beginning? It had to be that day. It had to be the day that changed it all. The first of many days that would change his life.

"When I was 10 years old… I found out that a man can't fly." Steve began his tale.

* * *

If he were to write a brief biography of himself it would read like this: Steven Grant Rogers was born on June 14th 1921 in Boston, MA. Moved to New York City September 1924. Started school 1926 and graduated 1938. Seeing Newsreel footage of the Nazi occupation of Europe he went to his local Army recruitment office and tried to enlist. Determined to be unfit for service he volunteered to be a guinea pig in a secret experiment to become a super soldier. It succeeded, the professor who innovated the process was assassinated, and he became the only super soldier. That was the story that everybody knew led to that star-spangled crime fighter in red, white, and blue bursting onto the scene. There was so much more to the story, though, and it was a hard story to tell.

He had wandered down to the east river, as if he could douse himself in it and become clean again. Even in those days the water was too dirty for that. Even were it clean, the slope was too treacherous to travel down. It was 1931, and he had just found out that a man could not fly. The brown stains on his school clothes looked like mud, but they weren't. They weren't, and people would ask questions. His parents and his brother would ask, and he would have no answers for them. What could he say? What could he tell them when he walked back from school covered in blood?

He should have been playing stickball with his friends in front of the tenement where he had lived since he was 3 years old, but he was afraid to go there. Afraid of the questions. Not just the questions that he would be asked, but the ones that he had. He was too young to understand, living in a time not totally innocent yet so different from our own. He just looked down into the river and watched the eddy and the current, trying to make sense of things himself. In that way, that little boy very much reflected the man he would become. If you walked by him on the street, you would not think that this skinny little kid named Steve could ever be a hero, much less a super hero, but that was what destiny had planned for him, and this day was the first day of that destiny.

He had been walking home from school when he had seen it. Something so wondrous to even pull him out of his daydreaming. He heard the people around him gasp, and he looked up to see what he couldn't believe. A man was flying through the air up in the shadows of the skyscrapers sailing through the air like an angel in a stained glass window. He marveled at it for a moment, but then he heard someone scream. The man flying through the air was only flying downward, and as he got closer it seemed to be coming faster. Steve didn't even have time to cry out before the high-end automobile parked beside him exploded into shards of glass and metal as the plummeting man struck it like a meteor. The wetness that sprayed Steve stung his eyes and almost blinded him. It was a moment before he looked down and realized that it was blood. All of this had happened in a few moments, but it seemed to last forever.

"Poor Bastard." He heard somebody mumble behind him.

"He jumped!"

"Must be a stock broker... maybe a banker..."

"What a mess."

He looked around and was horrified at the look on everyone's faces. A look of understanding. He didn't understand at all. He was confused. He could see the face of the man staring at him through the broken window of the car. His face told nothing. It was nothing. Whatever was alive there, whatever spark made it smile or frown, was gone. He did not look asleep. He looked artificial, like one of those wax dummies he saw at the museum. There was blood everywhere, and everybody was just walking around it and going about their business as a police siren approached. Steve was as frozen then as he would be in the decades after the war. Frozen and stunned. The man had blue eyes just like his father, staring right through him and into who knows where? They were cloudy with a lack of life. People in the movies died with their eyes closed… and maybe that was a good thing.

So here he was, by the river, looking down and trying to find some way to get clean. He had walked the wrong way after that, confused and in a daze. He wasn't close to home, and it was getting late in the day. He didn't have a watch, so he didn't know how late, and there was no one to ask. He wiped his face again and again with the handkerchief that he took with him to school. It scraped off some of the brown flecks on his face and only left small brown smudges on the hanky. He decided to go home, because the river had no answers for him. There was only one person who could have the answers. He began the long walk home, leaving the handkerchief floating on the river.

It was getting dark when he got home, but his mother was busy in the kitchen and did not seem too concerned with where he had been. His father, as always, had been in his study. His big brother Frank had just come home from work and sat in the chair next to the living room table with his neck flung back. His hands were black with ink, and looked like they were touched with death or something equally bad. He had dark circles under his eyes and they were very bloodshot. He looked too old to be 13. He hardly looked at Steve as the boy blundered past him on the way to the washroom. He washed his hands and face before changing his clothes to the more comfortable ones he wore at home. He wondered what his mother would say about the stains on his shirt. She probably wouldn't say anything. She was saying less and less these days. She seemed to be shrinking right before him. Maybe it was an optical illusion, because he was growing and he was staying the same. Maybe it was something else. She was getting smaller inside, and he was afraid that one day she would disappear altogether.

Steve looked into the small kitchen where his mother toiled , back to the living room where his brother relaxed. Neither one of them paid him any mind. To some it would seem unusual, but to Steve this was normal. His father would have the answers. His father always had the answers. He looked to the study door, wanting so much to talk to his father but knowing too well the consequences for opening that door. The yelling, the blazing blue eyes, and the iron hard grip. _Beware the Jabberwock, my son, the teeth that bite the claws that catch…_ it went through his mind, half formed fear and half made rhymes from who knows where. His father would know, for when he wasn't writing in his study he was reading. He just hoped that he could talk to him before he started drinking. Jack Rogers always seemed so much less all-wise and all knowing when he had been drinking.

He couldn't talk to his brother. What would he say to him? He was still just a kid too. His mom would just ruffle his hair and say "That's nice sweetie. Do your chores and don't forget your homework." and pretend that everything was all right like she always did. Sometimes it was like he could hear her constant, silent scream in everything she did. It was time to do his chores, so he cleaned his room and folded his clothes. Everything was carefully placed in the drawers of his dresser so that they would not be mixed up with any of Frank's things. His older brother was very adamant about Steve keeping away from his things. Steve was a very neat little boy, because all of his life that had been required of him. He made sure that the sheets and blanket pulled over his bed was pulled tight under the mattress, pulling out all the wrinkles. He made sure that his few toys, such as they were, were where they were supposed to be.

He sat down at his little study desk, the one that Frank had used until he left school, and pretended to read all the while waiting for the sound of his father's den door opening. When he looked down at the book all that he saw was the dead man's cloudy eyes looking at him. Looking through him. Silently telling him the things that no little boy should have to hear. The sound did not come until nearly dinner, and he almost jumped out of his little chair and ran to the living room. Then he saw that it was too late. His father's constant look of stern , focused concentration was gone and replaced by that relaxed and euphoric look. He had not been writing in there today. He had not been working. He had been drinking.

Around the dinner table they sat, saying next to nothing. His father hardly ate, but did not complain about the cooking as he often did when he was in one of his moods toward his wife. They ate and exchanged pleasantries so artificial that they would be called plastic by our generation. There they sat like department store mannequins having their bodies posed by an invisible force, a sappy ventriloquist talking for them in falsetto tones. His beautiful mother that would never get to use that beauty for anything but being a mother. His father, a skinny blond and blue eyed apparition of what Steve was doomed to become. His brother, taking more to his mother's side of the family. Handsome and rugged with big shoulders and thick arms. He had shoulders that could support the weight that had been put on them, and still carry some more. Meet the Rogers, people! Look at how happy they are! Ten cents please, and move along. Steve's whole world seemed to turn blue to his eyes, but at least it was an improvement to how the world have looked since that man fell from the sky.

Since then the world had been a dark red.

* * *

Steve never went to play stickball with the boys after school. He had tried a day or two, but he had always been picked last and sometimes told to go away when he was the odd man out. It wasn't just that he was small for his age. It wasn't just that he still had a little of that Boston accent that made him incongruous to the native New Yorkers. There was something wrong with him. He tried to swing the stick just like they showed him but he missed every time. He was awkward and clumsy, and didn't want to admit how hard it was for him to read the chalkboard at school because then he would have to wear glasses like his dad. They couldn't afford glasses for him. He was wearing Frank's old worn-out shoes, and they were not made for running around a stickball lot. They were made for going to school, just like Steve. Sometimes it seemed that the world had no use for him save to walk back and forth to Ms. Rawlins' school house. Like that man in Greek myth who had to push the boulder up the hill both ways.

He always told his mom or his brother, on the occasions that they asked, that he was playing with the other boys on the block. But he wasn't. Every day after school Steve went to the park and pulled out a piece of paper, draping it over a textbook. Not far from the bench where Steve and Bernie would look up at a bronze statue of his very own costumed likeness, Steve would draw everything that came by. It was the only moments of peace in his life. Somehow all the complexities and contradictions of life lost themselves in the flow. The world flowed through his eye, into his brain, through his body and into the pencil he held in his hand. Somehow, when it appeared on the paper it was better than life. More solid and more real somehow. Flawless and drained of the evil and inequity. He could not put words to it, but sometimes the blurry image he saw with his poor eyesight blurred even more with the tears in his eyes.

Birds perching on statues. People walking by laughing. One time a girl was just standing there, throwing seeds to the birds, and he drew her too. Sometimes it did not matter if they stayed or stood still. Sometimes it was better if they didn't, because then he could use the eye in his mind that remembered them the way that they should be. The way that the whole world should be. A world without slums or poverty, or clumsy weaklings. He drew until his eyes squinted in the sun and his hand hurt, and then he drew some more. When he felt like he had drawn enough, he got up and left as quietly as he had come. No one paid him any notice, as even in those days New York had bigger and better things to do. There was a recession going on, haven't you heard? So and so lost his whole life savings! Even the Rothschild's and the Carnegies are feeling the pinch! Oh, woe to the spirit of America it is dying. Steve knew nothing about it, because he had always been poor. He didn't know anything else.

* * *

Steve continued to tell the story and the world of Steve's youth came alive for Bernie. She could see the skyscrapers that remained to this day, but now were smog-stained dinosaurs instead of the brand new marvels that Steve had seen with young eyes. She could smell streets that for two centuries had been used for horse drawn carriages, and that odor was not yet inundated with the stench of those newfangled automobiles. Every man on the street was wearing a dark suit and tie with a hat, and even occasionally a bowler hat like this was jolly old England. The autos went putt putt instead of vroom vroom and nobody had ever heard of crack houses, urban blight, or suburban sprawl. At the same time he painted an entirely different picture of it in his words, and how it progressively got so much worse. At the end it seemed like everything was coming apart. Starvation, bread lines, and riots in the streets. Intolerance, hatred, racism, and crime rampaging through daily life like an alternate version of the four horsemen. In the middle of all this chaos was a little boy named Steve. She could see that little boy now, scared of the whole world but in love with it too.

"What happened to them all?" She asked.

"Who?"

"Your family. Your parents and your brother."

Steve closed his eyes as if collecting his thoughts.

"They are all dead and gone, Bernie."

Somehow she had known that, but looking at Steve's still-young face it was hard to believe that his parents would have cleared a hundred years old decades ago and that his brother would not be far behind. She wondered if he had any more family. Anyone at all to make him feel attached to this world.

"What were they like?" She asked.

"My mother was a saint. My father was the devil. My brother was a hero." He said, perhaps too simply, but it was all he could think to say.

* * *

"Bitch!" Jonathan Rogers screamed.

"Jack… not in front of Stevie…" Margaret Rogers begged.

"If I've told you once I've told you a thousand times to stay out of my study! I work my fingers to the bone all day typing obituaries for that stupid newspaper and all that I ask is that you give me a few hours of piece so that I can write something of substance! Something that will sell! Something that will get us out of this slum!"

"Jack…" She cried

"Shut up!" He screamed

"Stevie… wanted to see you…"

John Rogers continued to rave as if he hadn't even heard her. He screamed until she was backing up against the wall, getting smaller and smaller, closing in on herself. Once , she had made the mistake of calling him John instead of Jack. She had hit the ground before Steve even saw his father move, the sound like the cracking of a whip. She had learned better than to stand up to him like that, even in such a small way. Instead, when he yelled, she got smaller so he could feel bigger until the storm passed. That was how she survived her marriage to Jack Rogers. Steve survived by being invisible. Neither of them realized that he had calmly walked out of the room. He wasn't even crying, like he would have when he was younger. He should never have told her that he needed to talk to dad. Just like she always did, she wanted to try and fix everything. Some things just couldn't be fixed.

The fight died down to some sharp words, then finally murmured promises that could perhaps be contrition. Steve would never know, because he wouldn't listen. He had heard it all before. Instead he walked out the door and went to the window in the hall. Outside the boys were playing stickball and the girls were watching the boys playing stickball. Men didn't cry. He wouldn't cry. He couldn't cry. If he started crying he didn't know if he would ever stop.

"What's up Stevie?"

He turned to see his brother Frank walking down the hallway. He had just got back from work.

"Again." was all Steve said, and Frank knew perfectly well what he meant.

"Let's go for a walk, Stevie." His big brother said.

They took a walk around the block, looking at the stickball game as they went by. None of the kids that saw Steve even called out for him to join the game as he walked by. Steve walked with his hands jammed deep down in his pockets and looked at the ground, as if there was something that could trip him. Frank told him about his day working on the printing press at the paper where dad wrote his succinct little obituary columns. He would heave the big heavy stacks of papers and bundle them with twine before delivering them to the news stands across the city. It was hard work that Steve knew he couldn't do, yet his brother could do it easily. Frank was even starting to look like a man. When he looked in the mirror at his buck teeth and cow licks, Steve wondered if he ever would.

"Don't worry about all this, Stevie." Frank said "You'll see that it will all turn out all right. Mom and dad love each other. They love us too. It's just the world they hate. I didn't understand when I was your age, but I do now."

"Frankie?" Steve almost whispered.

"What?"

"If I tell you something… something secret… do you promise not to tell anyone?"

"What is it?"

"I saw a dead man the other day."

"Stevie? Are you sure?"

"Yeah, Frankie."

"What happened?"

"He… jumped off a building."

"On purpose?"

"That's what everybody said." Steve said miserably.

"Was he… like all messed up?"

"Yeah."

"Geez, Steve. Why didn't you say anything about it before?"

"Because… I don't know."

"Did you tell anyone else?"

"No, Frankie. I wanted to talk to dad, but… you know."

"Is that what's been bothering you?"

"You noticed?"

"Kinda."

"I just don't understand why."

"Why?"

"Why he did it."

They walked for a bit, coming back to the entrance of the tenement. They stood there for a bit, unsure if they should go in. Frank patted Steve on the shoulder and pulled him gently in the direction of the door.

* * *

Steve's dad was a member of a lost generation. John Rogers had gone to France in 1916 and never came back. Who had come back was Jack Rogers, who was an entirely different person. John Rogers might as well have been another of those 120,000 bodies that littered the ground at the end of the Meuse Argonne offensive. For a time he had stayed in France, along with Hemmingway and a crowd of other wits, but before long he had to come home. Margaret was waiting for him, and he knew from experience how rare that was. He had won her with his poetry, and since that day could write poetry no more. To write poetry you needed to understand beauty, and that understanding was gone from him.

The thunder of 1.2 million troops rumbling across no man's land still echoed in his mind when it was quiet. Jack never wanted it to be quiet, which is the real reason that he had moved here. He couldn't stand the quiet times, or the silent screams that only he could hear. He hated war with all of his heart, and every short story and novel he wrote railed against it, told the truth of how it destroyed even the bravest and most courageous of men. Yet they invariably came back to him with that yellow letter on the front. He took that yellow letter and tacked it to the wall with all the others. People didn't want the truth. They wanted the cowboy myth.

Steve watched his father read the newspaper, scowling at the news that obviously displeased him so much. At least he hadn't been drinking today. He finally scraped up the courage to tell him about the day that he saw the man die, the words falling tremulously from his lips as those hard blue eyes stared at him. Somehow he managed to finish, and by then his father was leaning back in his chair with a distant look in his eyes.

"You saw him?" Jack Roger's asked.

"Who?" Steve asked softly.

"The dead man."

"Yes."

"I saw so many." He said, closing his eyes "Back in the war. So many who begged and prayed and wanted so very much to live… no matter how badly they were…"

Steve's father fell quiet.

"Dad?" Steve asked, finally getting to the question that he couldn't put away "Why did he do it?"

"Steve… you have to understand. Life is a gift, and it doesn't belong to you. Your life belongs to your mother and father and country… and to God."

More silence.

"That man that you saw was a coward. He threw that gift away. He gave up."

Steve took those words from his father and made them the truth. He put them in a box and chained it shut, throwing it deeply into the ocean of his heart. He would never be that man. He would never give up, never quit, and never turn his back on the life that had been given him. Not as long as he lived.

* * *

The beeping from his pocket pulled Steve out of his story, and before he even thought of it his hand had reached and pulled out the Avengers ID card. Pushing a concealed button on it, his face turned into a mug shot of Jarvis that was moving.

"I'm here." He said simply.

"Sir, I am to inform you that there is a matter that requires your immediate attention." Jarvis said without further ado.

"I'm on my way, Jarvis." Steve said.

He turned to Bernie with regret in his eyes. How many times had they played out this scene? How many times would they? After all these years, their relationship dead and buried, it was still the same old song.

"I have to go."

"I know."

"I'll… I'll call you as soon as I can. I don't know how long it will be."

"That is ok Steve. If you need to talk call any time, day or night."

With no further words, or need for them, Steve picked up the portfolio that held his shield and walked briskly in the direction of Avengers mansion. There was an empty feeling in Bernie's heart. She had heard that it was bad, but she had no idea how bad. She picked up her cell phone and dialed the number that she had gotten a call from just yesterday. The call that had made her come see Steve in the first place.

"This is Bernie… It is worse than you thought…. I'll do what I can, but I don't think I'm going to be able to do it alone… Oh… You will? Thank you… Yes… I'll do what I can… Goodbye."

She put away the cell phone and sighed. She needed to get back to the office. There was work that she was neglecting, but she had never loved another man in this world like she loved Steve Rogers. She never would either, though even she did not know that. She had to help him, would do anything to help him, even if that meant duplicity.

Even if that meant betrayal.

**Next: A Time of Decision**

**How did a boy named Steve become the man who would be a hero? Read on next week, true believer!**


	3. A time of decision

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Chapter Two: A time of Decision**

The darkness of the New York skyline cloaked the movement of the two figures on the rooftop. Their precise movements showed years of experience not only at work like this, but working together at it. It was like a perfectly choreographed series of movements from shadow to shadow, silent and without need for verbal communication. As they crept to the filthy skylight they first kneeled then crawled before lying prone before it, perfectly invisible to those who awaited inside. To an outside observer, it would seem that the crime fighting team of Captain America and the Falcon was once again prowling the streets. They would be wrong.

"Good job locating this hideout, Scott." Cap whispered to Ant-man, who was perched on his shoulder. The Wasp was nestled in Falcon's fathers.

"There are a lot of ants in these abandoned warehouses along the docks." Ant-man said simply. "These characters aren't exactly the easiest to miss."

Looking down into the dirty skylight though could make out the forms of five colorfully costumed individuals gathered around a round table. There was one seat empty and the rest of them looked impatient. He knew from past encounters that this group had referred to themselves as the Squadron Sinister, the evil doubles of a group of heroes from an alternate earth, as strange as that was to believe. They were not so much "evil twins" of those heroes as much as simply people who had been given the "super" without understanding the "hero." Reed Richards had discussed it with him in depth on one occasion. His theory on it was that certain individuals existed on a multiplicity of worlds, and that on ours these individuals were not meant to acquire their superhuman powers or the life lessons that came with them. When the Grandmaster interfered with this destiny and artificially enhanced these individuals for the sole purpose of winning a contest with the Avengers he pulled these people away from the destiny that they had been constructing for themselves. Now they suffered from a kind of denial and confusion of values that comes with acquiring power so easily and unexpectedly. That confusion was something that both Steve and Reed could agree on and understand.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Now they had come to refer to themselves as the Sinister Syndicate, a now-defunct team of the same name once being led by Speed Demon when he branched out on his own. He could be seen sitting in one of the chairs, his mask hanging around his neck like the hood of a sweatshirt while he lit a cigarette. To his left was Dr Spectrum, a man who was neither a doctor nor necessarily knew what a spectrum was. When his power crystal had fallen into the hands of a female scientist she had been truly dangerous, but somehow this buffoon had managed to get his hands of it again. Next was someone new, but he recognized the costume. He had encountered the Golden Archer before, but not as Captain America. He had attacked Steve Rogers when he had given up the uniform, and that attack had convinced him to briefly create the secret identity of Nomad. He had not reappeared for years, and he wondered if it was a coincidence that he had right after Steve revealed his identity. The other two were unknowns, a tall and firmly muscled woman that looked like she could give She Hulk a run for her money as well as a man with wings carrying a wicked looking mace.

Cap wanted to give the order to attack now, and burst through the skylight with the call "Avengers Assemble." He knew that wasn't the way to play it, though. Overwhelming force would not work in this instance. Thor and Iron Man had not come to the call of assembly. They could not contact either the Vision or the Scarlet Witch either. She-Hulk had a trial that she could not postpone and Hank Pym was in the hospital after suffering another heart attack scare. That left this Skeleton Crew, four members. Even with the demonstrated incompetence of the SS this was a dangerous situation and required the element of surprise. That is why they were playing it this way. They think they are dealing with Captain America and the Falcon, then they get two tiny surprises. Cap knew that Jan and Scott had worked together to beat the Absorbing man and Titania, and discussed the tactics of that battle on the way here. The odds were not in their favor, but Captain America was no stranger to overwhelming odds.

"Scott, hide behind my shield. Jan, keep in those feathers until I give the signal." He knew that she was worried about Hank, and hoped that her worry and anger did not cause her to do something hasty.

"Got it, Cap." Scott said, but Jan just nodded.

He looked at Sam and knew that he didn't need to be told what to do. He never had needed to. They had done this together enough times to do it in their sleep.

"When I give the give the signal you call every ant, termite, and silverfish in this place and unleash hell." Cap told Scott. "Dr Spectrum is the key target. Break his concentration and he is about as dangerous as a sweat sock."

"On one. Ready. Five, four, three, two..."

And then he saw it, and had to grab Sam to keep him from barreling through the skylight.

The figure that walked in made the living legend hold his breath and would have made a lesser man break out in a cold sweat. He was probably 6'6 and, were he a normal man, could have been nearly 300 pounds of rippling muscle. He wore garish purple tights and a yellow cape dissimilar from the costume he had worn in the past but there was no mistaking his face, domino mask or no domino mask. He had been missing for years, and presumed dead. The Squadron Supreme had even confirmed this death when they had met briefly a few years ago.

His name was Hyperion.

"Abort mission." Steve said without hesitation, or a tone which permitted argument "We need to withdraw. We can't handle this threat."

Steve looked to the three others that looked to him, seeing confusion and argument in their eyes that they could not bring to their lips. Without a backward glance, he retreated to the shadows of the rooftop, and a casual observer wouldn't even notice him bounding from rooftop to rooftop. Janet Van Dyne flew out of the feathers of Falcon's wing and shared a concerned glance with Sam Wilson, and after that shared moment flew off after the man that had lead them into battle so many times. The glance they had shared silently said the same thing.

_Since when does Captain America retreat from ANYTHING?_

* * *

__

Cap took his mask off and threw it on the round table with the enormous A on it. One thing that no hero ever talked about was how sweaty and smelly a mask got after wearing it all night. No wonder the Fantastic Four never wore them. He wondered how Spider-man breathed inside of his when it got really soaked. Behind him were three disappointed and frustrated Avengers, and he could not show his own frustration or theirs would only get worse. Ant-man had taken off his helmet and he could now see the confusion in his eyes, while Falcon just looked about to explode. Janet was the only one who wasn't staring at him. In fact, it was as if she was trying to avoid looking at him.

"We have to move on with this." He said with as much of a decisive tone as he always had. "Until we can get back-up we cannot engage them directly, but we have the advantage of knowing where they are and how to follow them."

"How?" The Wasp asked quietly.

"Sam?"

"Already on it Steve. Redwing is keeping an eye on the warehouse." The Falcon said tightly.

The sight of a peregrine falcon eyeballing your hideout might have been a clue to some villains, but the SS was not exactly a troupe of criminal masterminds.

"Scott?"

"I've got Steed and Mrs Peel following anybody that leaves that warehouse." Scott said.

Jan rolled her eyes. She never approved of the names that Hank and Scott seemed to give to every little insect they befriended. She could talk to them too, but she never named them! They only were alive for a matter of days, for pity's sake! Why get so attached? Sometimes during their marriage Hank would get really depressed during the winter and she could never figure out why. She thought that he had seasonal affective disorder, but it just turned out that all of his friends were either dead, hibernating, or undergoing a metamorphosis.

"We have them at a tactical disadvantage. They can't make a move without us knowing about it. Once Iron man and Thor report in we can begin making assault plans. Jan, keep trying to get in touch with the Vision and the Scarlet Witch. Get Wonder man or She-Hulk if you can't. I want overwhelming force." He drove the point home by pounding his fist on the table.

"I'm going to check on Cassie, Cap." Ant-man said "I'll let you know if there is anything to report."

"Say hello for me, Scott." Cap said with a smile. He had a soft spot for kids, and Cassie treated him like he was her grandfather sometimes.

"I'm going to check on Hank, Steve. I'll be right back." Jan said.

That left Captain America and the Falcon alone.

"Is there something you want to talk about, Sam?" Cap said to the scowling Falcon

"They won't tell you what they're thinking, Steve. They admire you too much, but I'd like to think that I know you a little better." Wilson said bluntly.

"What is that?"

"You shouldn't have backed down like that. It was the wrong call."

"Hyperion tipped the scales against us. It was going to be a tough fight anyway, but that made it foolhardy and impossible."

"Answer me this, Steve." Falcon said, narrowing his eyes "You don't have me or the other two on the roof. You are looking down at the same crowd and you've got Black Widow, Black Panther, and Black Knight with you. Do you crash through that skylight?"

Steve thought about it for only a moment, but his hesitation told everything.

"You don't have any faith in me, and you don't have any faith in them." The Falcon said without giving him a chance to respond, veins popped out in his neck and forehead as he forced himself to whirl around and storm out of the room.

"Sam..."

"I would have at least hoped that you had faith in yourself!" Sam Wilson yelled before he slammed the door behind him.

Steve Rogers wiped the last of the sweat from his brow with the back of one red glove, and silently stood alone in the dim light of the Avengers' meeting room.

* * *

The phone rang, waking Bernie from a sound sleep.

"Yes..." Was all the answer that she could manage when she got her hand on the phone.

"I'm sorry to wake you." Steve said.

"That's... ok... I said you could." She said, vaguely remembering that she had. The digital readout on her alarm clock said 3 AM.

"I shouldn't have called."

"Do you want to meet someplace?" She said. "For Coffee?"

"Coffee... sounds good." Steve said awkwardly.

"I'll meet you at the Central Perk in fifteen minutes." Bernie lied. She would take much more time than that, but wanted him to wait for her.

"That would be... great." Steve managed.

Bernie hung up and was awake almost immediately with a joy that she had to silence in her throat.

"Who was that?" She heard him say from the other side of the bed. He was still half asleep.

"Oh, that was my sister." Bernie lied "She had a fight with her boyfriend and really needs to talk to someone. She doesn't feel safe out on the streets."

"Damn it..." He groaned.

"It'll be ok. You just sleep here. I'll be right back. I might have to get her a room for the night or something, though."

In a flurry she got ready. It probably took her easily 20 min to get as pretty as she wanted to be and slip out before he saw what she was wearing. She hoped that it was conservative enough not to send the wrong message yet sexy enough to project the prospect. It was hard to tell sometimes with Steve, because he was so old fashioned about many things. She slipped out before Irving could catch sight of her and heard a grunted goodbye right before the door closed. Her mother may have loved Irving Forbush, and he might be her fiancé, but he was no Steve.

* * *

Steve wondered what the hell he was doing here.

He was on his third cup of coffee when Bernie finally showed up, and he had spent the intervening time looking at his Avengers ID. He expected it to go off at any minute. He felt like a polecat in a room full of alley cats. People were looking at him and whispering. He was not in uniform, but he supposed that hardly mattered anymore. This place was much too trendy for him, and when he had ordered a coffee the waitress had pestered him with a menu. She didn't believe that he just wanted coffee. No cappuccino, no latte, no breve, no mocha... just coffee. She had flirted with him. She had asked for his autograph... and when he reluctantly agreed to it she had started unbuttoning her shirt before being dragged away by the manager. This group of six friends kept staring at him. They looked somewhat familiar, but he put it out of his mind. Unless they were the Sisters of Sin on a date with Batroc, Machete, and Zartan he didn't have anything to worry about.

Steve rose and pulled back her chair for her, and she knew better than to complain about the chauvinism. Archaic gestures like that were part of who Steve was. She had a better chance of getting him to use his shield as a hubcap than she did of convincing him that men didn't need to do that sort of thing anymore. Bernie sat down quickly and with a smile.

Steve didn't chide her for being late because he had awoken her in the middle of the night. He was tough as the barnacled underbelly of a battleship, but that didn't mean he was callous. She looked so good to him. Too good. He muttered a low hello and hoped that she wouldn't notice everybody giving him the hairy eyeball.

"Hi Steve." She said, smiling through bright lipstick.

"I'm glad that you came." Steve said, taking a drink from his cup and handing her the menu.

"What did you want to talk about?"

"I thought that we would just pick off where we left off." Steve said.

"The Great Depression?" Bernie asked, half joking.

"No... it was a little after that." Steve said somberly.

* * *

1936. It was the year that they finally got a radio.

Steve had gotten a job after school helping a broken down old cabbie named Paul Pulaski carry his passenger's luggage. He thought that he was going to quit school at 13 like his brother had, but his father wouldn't hear of it. He insisted that he go to college and insisted just as vigorously that he would find a way to pay for it. The past four years had not been kind to his father, though, and he was drunk more often than not. It was like watching him die, but only in slow motion. He was a little more dead every time Steve came back from work. His mother would disappear, sometimes for hours and sometimes for a whole day or night. Yet she would have no explanation and his father didn't press her. She brought back money and that was what mattered. Food was put on the table and there was enough left over for a used radio bought at an estate sale. At this point Jack Rogers cared about his wife even less than he cared about himself. She wasn't even worth yelling at. He wrote his letters to his old pal Hemmingway, having the time of his life in the middle of the Spanish Civil war. George Orwell was there too. He corresponded with writers when he could no longer write himself.

"Harding... Coolidge... Hoover... they let it all slip away." He heard his father lamenting to himself one night. "Now its too late... can't they see that?"

Steve had his own room now. Frank had lied about his age and joined the Navy. As he got older his conflicts with his father got more frequent and more violent. Eventually it came to blows when Jack Rogers slapped Margaret in front of Frank. He found out the hard way that his son had grown bigger and stronger at 16 than he would ever be. But there was one thing that he could do, even as he lay beaten on the floor. Throw him out of the house and disown him. Steve had come home from work to find his Father beaten and his brother gone. Now after he was done with work he told Mr. Pulaski goodbye and went to the movie theaters. He escaped himself in black and white pictures not unlike the pictures he drew in the park. The world the way that it should be.

The only problem was the Newsreel footage, and he hated it with all his heart and soul.

Hitler in Nuremberg, his soldiers marching around a bunch of crooked crosses. Hitler yelling like a maniac. Hitler this, Mussolini that, Stalin the other thing. These were not the things a 14 year old boy concerned himself with. It all seemed so far away to Steve and made him wish that they would just show a cartoon. When the movie finally rolled he sighed in relief. The outside world with all of its reality and inequity was gone, and the actors on the screen brought forth the stuff of dreams. The cowboy always punched the bad guy or shot the gun out of his hand, kissed the girl, and rode off into the sunset. That was how the world should be. The good guy should win, the bad guy should lose, and nice guys should finish first. Then he looked over and watched Mary holding hands with Rich and he knew he was back in reality.

Nice guys finished last.

How had it crept up on him? The girls had always been around, so how come now they seemed more important now? Last Saturday he had asked Mary if she had wanted to go with him to the movies and she had laughed in his face. She had actually thought that he was joking. Then she had said a few kind and meaningless words he did not even remember before going off to rejoin her friends, who were watching Rich Brooks' batting practice. He hoped that she had not only said those kind words because she saw the color in his cheeks, or the way he could not look her in the eye. Then he turned away, kicked a can, and went to the Theater himself. Even though only 14 it seemed that all the other guys were getting bigger when he wasn't , and that the smaller he seemed the more insignificant he was.

As he walked home that night he remembered how he had met Mr. Pulaski.

He was 12 years old and already the kids his age were noticing that he was smaller than them, and suddenly the ones who had been friends drifted away and the ones who were not drew in closer. They were the ones that he always saw. They were always in his face, taunting and laughing and pushing. Always pushing. His father had taught him not to push back, taught him that violence never solved anything even as he didn't practice what he preached. So Steve took it, because he knew that if he could just get through that day he could go home and they would be just a memory... until the next day. That had been true until that cold day in November.

He had been walking toward the park, where he planned to practice his drawing until his hands lost all feeling in the cold. It had been a rough day but he had left all the thugs and all the bullies behind. They had all seemed to be friends until just last year. What had happened? Why were things so different now? He didn't understand then, and would not for many years come to peace with it. He was lost in thought when the leg came out from around the corner and collided with his right ankle, spilling him to the pavement. He landed on his elbow and books and papers spilled out of his shabby book bag. Laughter rained down on him as he rolled over to see who had tripped him.

It was three of the big kids. The ones that didn't pay any attention to any of his classmates at school. They were all smoking cigarettes and smelled like the garbage in the alley. They pulled him to his feet and threw him against the wall.

"What did I do? What do you want?" Steve had asked them, but it had not sounded enough like pleading to them.

"Cash is always good." One of the thugs had said, grabbing him with his dirty hands and gangrenous fingernails.

"I don't have any!" Steve said, telling the truth.

The punches came like rain, and the next thing that he knew he was on the ground again and they were kicking him. He did all that he could, putting his arms over his face like a boxer and pulling his legs up to protect his stomach and groin. He rolled over and tried to take the kicks in his back and buttocks. He instinctively knew what parts his didn't want them to hit. Instinct would save him many times over the years, but it surely did that day.

"HEY!" The shout came, deep and loud. "Stop you there! Leave that boy alone!"

It was the strong voice of an adult, and just like the cackling bullies were just kids again. Bigger kids, but still just kids. They ran from the man as he yelled at them shouting. Steve just laid there and groaned. He had not been hurt badly, because the bullies were more focused on humiliation than injury. He rolled over and stared at the man as he came back toward him.

"Son? Do you need help son?" The big man said, not unkindly.

Steve was wary of the middle aged man who came to help him, not because he had any reason to be suspicious, but mostly because of what he said. Nobody that wasn't his father had ever called him son. The old man helped him up and dusted him off, then helped him collect up his books and papers as they blew down the street.

"Thank you, sir." Steve said earnestly.

"You don't have to thank me son. It was right thing to do and everybody should want to do the right thing, no?" He had a strange way of speaking and a slight accent that Steve couldn't place, but he seemed very kind.

"Thanks anyway, sir."

"What is your name, son?" Mr. Pulaski asked as he walked him toward a yellow cab with its driver's side door wide open.

"Grant." Steve said without thinking. He wasn't sure if he wanted to give this stranger his name, especially after how embarrassed he had been with the bullies.

"Well, Grant, my named is Irvanch Pulaski, but friends call me Irv because it is hard to say for them. I drive this cab for downtown service." He said, waving his hands with pride. "I give you a ride to the hospital if you need.

"No." Steve said after a moment of thought. He was sore and bruised, but didn't feel injured.

"I give you lift to your home, then. Just to be safe." Mr. Pulaski said with a smile.

The next week he had encountered Mr. Pulaski again trying to change a tire on his Taxi. He had injured his back on another job before he was a cab driver, and he was having a lot of difficulty. This time it was Steve's chance to help. He found himself helping the cabbie for the rest of the afternoon handing bags for his customers, and at the end of the day he gave him a dollar. That was how such things started in those days. Small, innocuous events took on much more significance in time. That was how Steve got his first job. During the day he went to school, getting good but not great grades. Spending too much time doodling during the lectures and getting pushed around in the playground. In the evening he worked for the cabbie with the bad back. To this day Mr. Pulaski still called him Grant every day.

It was kind of like having a secret identity.

The night that Steve came home with the radio his father was already passed out on the couch. The book on his lap was a huge monster called "War and Peace." He was halfway through it and halfway through the bottle that sat on the coffee table. Steve's mother was pulling in the clothes that had spent the day drying on the line strung between buildings. He had expected great excitement from his mother when she saw the radio, but instead the expression that greeted him was a vague kind of worry.

"Where did you get the money to buy that, Stevie?" She asked in a worried tone of voice.

"The old fashioned way, mom." Steve smiled "I earned it."

She walked very close to him and put one hand on his shoulder and ruffled his hair with the other, she seemed very tired and had dark circles under her eyes. She smelled slightly of cigarette smoke, even though Steve had never seen her smoke he somehow knew she did.

"You haven't been doing anything you shouldn't have you Stevie?" She asked very softly.

She softened her expression somewhat when he told her about the job that he had been doing for Mr. Pulaski. She never said what she thought he might be doing, and never questioned his honesty, but there was something there. Something unspoken in the way that she had asked. No one ever asked her how she brought home the mysterious money that put food on the table and paid the bills that Jack Roger's salary would not cover. It was as if she could understand. She had come from a good upbringing before she had fallen for the cocky poet that was going to change the world. She had never had to worry about poverty when she was Steve's age. She still didn't think it was a good idea to let Steve's father know about his having a job. He was very adamant about Steve attending college.

"We'll just tell your father that I bought the radio." Margaret Roger's told her son. "It'll be our little secret."

Steve watched his father sleep on the couch as he turned on the radio for the first time, the buzzing of vacuum tubes giving a hum to the entire world. Steve listened to the worlds of that man who was speaking about the trouble that he saw every day. He was talking about poverty, blight, malaise, hopelessness, and the petty injustices of a system that perpetuated it. He talked of a new world that could be, a better world. The world that Steve had always seen in his mind. The better world that he had drawn with his own hands. A new deal that would round out and even out the "square deal" that had been reneged so long ago. It was a strong voice, a clear voice, a New York voice.

It was the voice of President Franklin Roosevelt, and it was a voice that spoke to Steve's soul.

* * *

"You admired him so much?" Bernie asked, somewhat surprised.

Steve looked back at the brunette that asked him that question with a moment of incredulity, and then he remembered. He was looking at Bernie from the other side of such a wide bridge. So very much had happened since then. All that Bernie had ever known was lies, scandal, and cynicism. She had lived her life neck deep in the media, so how could he explain how it was at the beginning? How could he explain how he could look around everyday and see the marvels that would have been laughed at as bad science fiction when he was a child?

"Yes." He finally said "Don't you?"

"He's... just a guy in a history book to me Steve." She said honestly.

Steve nodded, conceding her point. He took another drink of coffee and thought of how best to explain it to her.

"It was like being deaf, living all your life like that, and then one day POP! You can hear again and you don't know what to do with it. Suddenly you know what you've been missing and there is no going back. Suddenly the world makes a whole lot more sense."

"Did you ever think that he might have just been telling you what you wanted to hear?" Bernie asked, not unkindly.

Steve smiled "Not for a minute."

"I guess that things were a little different then." Bernie said wistfully. "What did your family think?"

"It was one of the few things that me and my Father ever agreed on. We would sit by the radio every night and he would listen intently. He wouldn't even drink when the President's address came on. Mom would drop whatever she was doing. It would be... like being a real family." Steve said that last bit very quietly, noticing that most of the customers were gone by now.

It was looking as it the coffee shop were preparing to close for the mandatory two hours between six and eight. Steve should be working out right now, but he had gotten carried away with his need to tell this story. Bernie didn't even look tired after two of the quadruple shot mocha-chino monstrosities she had slugged down during the course of their conversation. The waiter that had replaced the overzealous waitress came by and refilled his cup, and he waited for him to depart before he continued. The cautious part of him had not gotten so lost in his tale that he wasn't paying attention to the other customers. You never knew when a member of the Serpent Society might get a yen for a Frappichino. At least, that is how his luck had always gone when he had a date.

Was this a date? He hadn't been on one in so long he couldn't tell.

"What about your brother?" Bernie asked.

"He wrote to me and sent me postcards from the most unlikely places, but I missed him so much. That room seemed so empty without him, and I never put anything in his drawers. It was as if... I kept hoping that he would come back."

"But he never did."

Steve was silent again for a bit "The night I told him about the man who jumped off the building he told me something important."

"What?"

"He said that a man could live for a month without food, days without water, and only minutes without oxygen... but couldn't live at all without hope. He said that somebody had to be the one to bring that hope. Somebody had to rise up to the whole country and be the example."

"So the President was your example?"

"The President was my hope." Steve corrected.

* * *

Nothing seemed the same to Steve as 1936 became 1937. The newsreels stopped being a nuisance before the show and took on an entirely different weight. It was like some big hand had come and dumped the world on its head. He had seen the footage of Nuremberg, but that had just seemed like a circus compared to the pictures of the German Army rolling into the Rhineland. Then came the Olympics, and the arrogance of Hitler using it as a showcase for Aryan superiority. When he looked into the raving, shouting face of Adolph Hitler, he didn't see a man. He saw a bully kicking him while he was down. He saw the dead blue eyes looking through the wreck of a car. He saw the Jabberwock, with teeth that bite and claws that catch _flashing blue eyes and an iron hard grip._

Why couldn't everybody see that he was a madman?

With Mussolini's Italians invading Ethiopia like a pack of hungry wolves and Franco's Fascists dropping bombs on their own people it was like the world was going mad along with him. Even here in America crazy stories were dominating the news. People were living in fear, whispering stories about men running through the street on fire and fish-men from below the waves. There were stories about a crackpot in a cape declairing war on gangsters and insisting that he was on a mission from heaven. The madness was spreading. People were seeing monsters everywhere but where they actually were. The monsters were right in front of their faces, and they didn't look like flaming demons or freakish fish-men. Their masks were the faces of normal human beings.

"You can't just sit on sidelines and watch, Grant." Mr. Pulaski told him one day when they were driving around desperately looking for a fare "Like all these people I drive every day they just don't care. You are almost a man now, and you must make decision. Make decision, and live with it. Like a man, yes?"

Mr. Pulaski loved America so much. Steve thought that the old man loved it more than any American that he had met. He filled their evenings together with stories of the old country and how bad he had it, and the good life that his family had here. He talk about his plan and how he was going to bring his whole family here, even his in-laws who he did not care for. He saved for it every day. He wanted all of them and all of their children to have the opportunities that he had. He was the most humble, grateful man that Steve had ever known.

One day there was an accountant in the back seat railing against Roosevelt and his taxes, talking about waging class warfare and rabble rousing and all sorts of financial gibberish that Steve didn't even understand. When the unpleasant man had gotten out of the cab and it was just the two of them Mr. Pulaski felt free to speak again.

"I am proud to pay taxes in country such as this." He said.

One day Mr. Pulaski invited him to come home and meet his wife and two little children. His bigger children had grown and gone, he said, but it would be nice anyway. Steve said that he couldn't because his parents were waiting, which was only half true. He wished him good night and went to the Theater again, where he could be in the darkness for a few hours and pretend that he was somebody else. Somebody strong. Somebody who could do something about all the evil that was in the world. There had to be a hero in this world. There had to be somebody strong enough to stand up to the bullies, dictators, and facists. He would be in that darkness, pretending, throughout the year 1937.

* * *

"Excuse me, Sir." The waiter broke in, not sounding facetious when he used the last word "We are preparing to close now."

Steve smiled at the kid. He was a skinny little guy like he used to be.

"We'll be out of your hair in a minute, son." Steve said.

The skinny waiter smiled and turned away.

Bernie yawned and Steve could see that she was exhausted. He knew that he had kept her too long, but for some reason talking this over with her had made him feel better. What's more, it had resolved something within him. The thing that made him call in the first place. He stood up and offered her his hand, and if it was a chauvinistic gesture she took it without complaint. Without a work they walked out of the Central Perk and looked over to the eastern horizen where the sun was struggling to rise.

"I would... like to do this again soon, Steve." Bernie said with a tired smile.

"I already feel like I've taken advantage of your offer." Steve said honestly "Its... been awhile since I had someone that I can talk to."

"I wouldn't have made an offer that I couldn't back up." Bernie said "I'm glad that we're talking again."

"I'll call again as soon as I can." Steve promised "Right now... well... I have some Avenger's business to take care of."

"I understant completely." Bernie said with a grin "I have a client to meet with at eight."

"I wouldn't like to keep you from that."

"Its in the area anyway."

Then the beeping started.

"You're worse than a doctor." Bernie laughed.

"Duty calls again." Steve said as he pulled out the ID card.

"Sir, the others have arrived and are waiting on your arrival." Jarvis said crisply.

"Tell them I'm on my way."

Steve and Bernie looked at each other for a silent moment, then they both just smiled. It was as if there was something more to be said but neither of them knew what it was. Bernie leaned forward and grabbed his shoulders before kissing him gently on the cheek.

"Good luck, Steve." She said, and he could see the worry in her eyes. When they had been together he had seen in so many times before. Then she walked away and hailed a cab.

Steve knew then what had been eating away at him after his conversation with Sam. It had been nothing more or nothing less than self doubt. He had been shaken, and for a moment he was certain that he had made the wrong decision. As he briskly walked back in the direction of the mansion he thought about the things he and Bernie had talked about. The decisions we made in life were important. You had to make those choices and live with them. Mr. Pulaski had been right about that much. He did not know if he had made the right decision on that rooftop, but he did know that he had made the best one. Sometimes, that had to be good enough.

As he marched back toward the mansion, he didn't look back. If he had, he might have seen that Bernie never got in that cab. Instead, a limousine pulled up and its window rolled down.

"So how much progress have you made with the good Captain?" The voice from within asked her Bernie swallowed the first response that came to mind, put aside the shock at being approached like this, and said the best thing she could think of.

"I don't think that this is the place to discuss that."

"Then get in, Ms. Rosenthal... you look positively dead on your feet." She saw the driver get out to open the door for her. He looked like the kind of guy who had spent college crushing beer cans on his forehead and planning panty raids.

Shortly after the door closed behind her the limousine sped away.

_Next: A date with destiny _

_How will Cap face Hyperion and the Sinister Syndicate? What is Bernie hiding? What is Falcon's problem? What is the secret of Steve's first love, and how did it drive him to his fateful decision? When will I ever stop asking questions? Tune in next week True Believer!_


	4. A date with destiny

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Chapter Three: A date with destiny**

It wasn't Captain America that walked up the path to the gates of Avenger's Mansion, but rather it was Steve Rogers. Wearing civilian clothes still felt like a sham sometimes, especially since he had revealed his identity to the world, but for some reason he had felt it necessary in this case. Bernie had always seemed ill at ease when she saw him in uniform, although she had never said anything of it. Meeting her like that would have caused even more of a scene than it had ended up being. Jarvis opened the door for him with a typically English greeting and waved him in quite unnecessarily. Unbeknownst to him he felt exactly the same way about Jarvis' ritual as Bernie felt about his pulling back her chair and opening the door for her. Bernie and whatever it was that was going on between them would have to wait, though. Jarvis let him know that the Sinister Syndicate had just left their hideout location and was waiting on a plane at a closed down private airport utilized by Fisk Enterprises before it had been shut down. Jarvis explained this as he took Steve's coat... and shirt... and pants... and shoes.

As Jarvis stored his civilian clothes in the cloakroom (which, being Avenger's mansion, had seen its share of cloaks) Cap pulled on his mask and marched toward the same meeting room where he had his confrontation with the Falcon. He hoped that this time it would go better, but whether or not it did there was still a mission to accomplish. The mission always came first. When he walked into the room, whatever conversations were going on ground to an abrupt halt. When things like that happened it made him feel like a teacher walking into a classroom. It made him feel like the first person to see him was going to yell "Company... attend-shun!" and salute him. It made him feel awkward, but he had gotten used to it and put it out of his mind. He needed to appear confident and decisive at all times... even when he was not feeling so.

A quick appraisal of the meeting room held Jan and Sam, but also Iron-man, Thor, and surprisingly Hawkeye. He did not comment on it, but things had not been going well between them lately and he was not convinced that Clint Barton was ever going to come back as long as he was the leader of this team. They could talk about that later, because for now he was here and he was needed. Scott Lang was nowhere to be seen, but that in itself was not unusual.

"Hello everyone." He began without preamble "You know the situation. This is going to be a quick surprise attack, and the advantage is ours. We were planning to assault them in their hideout but they did us a favor by relocating. Now we don't have to worry about attacking them on their turf. We're going to hit them hard and fast, and with luck on our side they will be down before they know what hit them."

"Right on." Hawkeye said with a surprising lack of sarcasm as he cracked his knuckles.

"Are there any questions? Does anyone have anything to add?" Cap asked, looking to each of the Avengers before him.

"We're waiting for Hank." The Wasp said softly, as if she did not agree with the decision. Hank Pym had been released from the Hospital right before Cap's meeting with Bernie, but he insisted that he had a clean bill of health and was ready for action. Cap would have to speak with him privately before lift-off.

"We go wheels up in 20 minutes." Cap said with no further explanation, then turned and left the meeting room.

He drank a gallon of coffee while he was talking to Bernie but he hadn't had any water all night, so he headed to the kitchen where he could crack open one of the 1.5 liter bottles of water that Jarvis stored there just for him. It had taken a while for him to wrap his mind around the concept of selling water in bottles for money, but once he told himself he was just drinking from a different kind of canteen it had been easier to deal with.

"You know that Jarvis could have fetched that for you."

When Cap turned around Iron man stood there with his helmet off. He hadn't shaved and looked sallow eyed. This was just one of those days where everybody was tired. Tony Stark smiled at him despite his obvious fatigue, but he still looked like he wanted to sit his iron butt on one of the comfy couches that were about the mansion. That he was here talking to him instead meant that he had something important to say to him.

"What is it, Tony?" Cap asked, pulling off his mask without even thinking about it.

"Actually, its you." Tony said in a straightforward tone of voice. He never had been one to beat around the bush "Everyone is concerned about you. They are... not accustomed to you leaving without telling anyone and showing up late with no explanation."

"But they don't feel that they can challenge me about it." Steve stated. Falcon had told him almost exactly the same thing.

"Don't think of me as the Hatchet man, Steve. I'm just your friend here. Everybody knows that something has been bothering you, but they don't know what to do about it."

Steve took another drink of water.

"I'm dealing with it, Tony." Steve said, perhaps a little more sharply than he intended.

"I know that you are. You always do." Tony sounded even more tired than ever. "I just want you to know that I have troubles too, and I can understand what you are going through if you need to talk."

"You'll be the first one I call." Steve assured him, and threw him a bottle of water before walking out with his own.

Tony's heart was in the right place, but he didn't realize that this was not the time or place to worry about Steve Rogers' problems. There was a mission, and that is when everything was ok. Just as long as he had a mission, just as long as there was an objective, he could immerse himself in the plan. He could be Captain America without having to worry about anything else. Things had never been the same between him and Tony ever since that dark day in the Vault. He had forgiven him and their working relationship had resumed, but it still left a bad taste in his mouth. All the things that had come and gone since had not made that go away. There was no way that he could talk to Tony Stark about what was going on inside his heart. In a strange way... it seemed to him that Tony was asking him for help. There wasn't time to worry about that now.

Cap found Hank Pym gearing up in the changing room next to the Avengers' gym.

"How are you feeling, Hank?" he asked him as he regarded the pale and drawn biochemist turned adventurer. He looked like death warmed over.

"I'm ready to go. That's what counts." Hank said.

"I thought that you told us that your health problems were a thing of the past."

"I thought so too, but it seems like age and genetics is taking its natural course. This isn't growth related, they say."

Steve had been exactly where Hank had been once before. His super soldier serum had been failing and he had the choice between a long and healthy life or a paralysis induced death. Everyone knew which one he had chosen, and the consequences that fate had helped him avoid. He could not lecture Hank about wanting to go back into action, but he could make sure that he didn't get hurt.

"I've got a special task for you on this mission." Cap said as they walked out to the gym together. "You're the only one that can do it."

"Just say the word, Steve."

"You have to stay with the Quinjet. Too many of the Syndicate have the ability to fly, and Hyperion can easily outdistance either Thor or Iron Man. There is no way that they are outrunning a Quinjet. If they try to bolt, I need you on their six."

"So I stay out of the fight, with the jet, and just follow them if they bug out."

"Yes."

Steve could see the disappointment on Hank's face. He should have known that he couldn't get anything by a genius, but he had put it forth in a way that let him know that he only had his best interests at heart. After a brief moment, Hank Pym nodded. He was obviously frustrated, but couldn't argue with the wisdom of the decision. Under the circumstances, that was the best that Cap could expect. In another life, Henry Pym might have been a good soldier.

* * *

Cap never told the other Avengers, but at moments like this he felt most alive.

They were speeding toward the airport in a Quinjet with Hank at the controls. Ant-man, it turned out, had chosen to spend the day with his daughter. Steve often wondered what kind of decision he would make in Scott's shoes. He had no family to worry about. The people in this Quinjet, to his left and right, were the closest thing that he had to family. That was why he had not thrown them against the Syndicate back at the warehouse. Falcon was still had not spoken with him, but he knew that Sam would do what he was supposed to do regardless. He had been his partner for years and could trust him as much as he could trust his right arm.

"Come in low, Hank." Cap barked out. The Quinjet might have been one of the most quiet aircrafts in existence but inside it was still a dull roar.

Henry Pym plunged the aircraft low enough to fly between two buildings at they approached the Airport, and Cap gave everyone the cue by unbuckling the straps that crossed his chest and standing up.

"Lets do this." He said simply, looking at the assembled Avengers.

The six heroes stood on the red square behind the rows of seats and braced themselves. The trap door at the bottom of the Quinjet had been Iron Man's idea back in the days when the team had been split into east coast and west coast teams. Naturally he would come up with the idea because he could fly. He had already made it clear that they were not to be helped to the ground, though. When the trap door opened, Hawkeye and Cap were on their own.

"Ready to do this, old-timer?" Hawkeye said with a smirk.

"I don't know. My rheumatism has really been acting up." Cap said dryly.

"Behave, boys." Jan said, flitting between their heads.

All of their eyes were focused on the red light on the ceiling, which would become a green light a full second before the trap door opened.

"Ready on my mark!" Hank yelled from the pilot seat. "3... 2... 1... MARK!"

The light turned green, and they all hunkered into a cannonball position.

"Whoo hoo!" Hawkeye screamed as they were falling through the air. He had no idea the time and place that howl took him back to, or the chill that went down his spine when he heard it.

In free-fall, Cap calmly looked down at the approaching airport. Ant sized figures below were slowly becoming bigger. With a rush of air, Iron-man roared by them. He obviously wanted to be the first one there. Falcon followed shortly after, and if Jan was using her powers of flight to speed her decent he didn't see it. Thor was going to use his powers over the wind to slow their decent, and even now he was feeling the rush of wind slowing his free fall. That force was probably blowing Jan backwards as well. Wind flowing against him with gale force made him feel as if he was almost flying, but he was still approaching the ground at deadly speed. As he slipped his shield under his feet, he hoped to God that no one was stupid enough to try and catch him.

Steve collided with the ground with enough force to spider-web the pavement with cracks, and he felt the jolt in every joint of his body, but the indestructible shield had force absorbing properties that had made blows from the Hulk feel like playful punches from an eight year old. Chaos was everywhere. Hyperion was shooting eye blasts in all directions, and little zaps striking his body showed that the Wasp was his tormentor. Iron-man was strafing the airstrip with repulsor blasts from above, making seem like field artillery was being called in. Syndicate members ran in all directions looking for cover that wasn't there. Only the tall, painfully beautiful woman stood her ground. He saw that she carried a transparent, golden shield and she was looking right at him. When a repulsor blast got too close, she blocked it with the shield and continued to stare at Cap imperiously.

Why were all the real knock-outs always evil?

His eyes shifted left and right as he charged her down without a word, scanning for possible threats from all directions, because this was no different than a thousand battlefields he had been on. Falcon zoomed over his head, locked in aerial combat with the winged maniac swinging a mace. An arrow zipped by him, and another from the other direction. It seemed as if Hawkeye and Golden Archer had made each other's acquaintance. Lightning struck Hyperion, and Cap found himself hoping that Jan wasn't still zipping around his head. All of this taken into account, he still didn't see the blow that knocked him down, causing him to skid to the feet of Power Princess. He had intended to shield bash her with enough force to drop a charging rhino, and would have succeeded if he hadn't been cold-cocked. He caught a brutal kick to the face instead. The blow to his head had been like being shot at, with a sound like a supersonic bullet zipping by, but he knew how a punch felt. Power Princess pinned him to the ground with one boot and snorted. He heard the supersonic whine again and he put his shield up just in time to hear a satisfying cracking noise.

"Arrggeh! My hand! You bastard!" He heard a reedy voice howling in pain. He knew that he had just broken at least two of Speed Demon's knuckles. It reminded him of the days when he was training a young and stupid Quicksilver. As fast as the young mutant had been, his arrogance never let him consider the possibility that a mere human could be fast enough to harm him. Power Princess was smirking down at him, but he wiped that smile off her face by pile driving his shield into her instep. Superhuman strength or no, everybody had nerve endings. He grabbed the same ankle and savagely twisted, toppling her to the ground.

When she looked up, it was Captain America standing over her.

"Get up." He ordered.

Speed Demon raced away, cradling his injured fist, and Iron-man rocketed after him. He heard a loud "Twang" noise that he realized was a bowstring breaking and guessed from a flurry of cursing that Golden Archer had just found out that Hawkeye was a better shot. When Captain Hawk (or whatever he called himself this week) crashed into a bunch of boxes he supposed that the man had found out the same about Falcon. A staggered Hyperion seemed to be learning a similar lesson from Thor as hammer blow after hammer blow found its mark. Dr. Spectrum was too busy using his fancy energy blasts to combat the swarm of wasps that were trying to eat him alive to do much of anything else, and Janet blasted him unconscious with one bio-electric sting. Everyone was executing his plan exactly as he had briefed it, using speed and confusion to their advantage. Improvising only when necessary. Using the appropriate amount of force. Now it was his turn.

He circled Power Princess, and from the look in her eyes he knew that she would not respond to any appeals to surrender. One look in her eyes told him that she was a warrior through and through. She looked ready to break him in half. She had probably never been knocked from her feet by any man, or given an order from one either. Cap was 6'2 and she towered over him, muscles rippling all over her frame. If it was her intention to break him in half, that would be an easily attainable goal. There was a time when he would have been too much of a gentleman to hit a lady, but the world had moved on. One thing that he had learned on the icy fields of Europe was that to survive you needed to adapt. Sometimes that meant you had to change with the times.

Power Princess made the first move, swinging her shield like a scythe cutting down wheat. She was obviously a competent combatant, but had telegraphed that movement with an obvious overconfidence. She connected with nothing but air before Cap's fist exploded from behind his shield with no wasted motion, a straight jab from the shoulder that collided solidly with her chin. Her chin was hard as rock, but from the dazed expression that followed the punch it was obvious that her jawbone had cut off the blood flow through her carotid arteries for a moment. That she was still standing was a testament to her superhuman endurance. Ignoring the pain in his hand, he spear-handed her in the diaphragm so hard that he felt all four of his knuckles jam. He would have to put ice on that later. She was doubled over, gasping for air, when his spinning back kick hit her directly in the ear.

She fell down to one knee, incapacitated for the moment. A normal human woman, or even a very strong man, would be dead or crippled. He saw Jan fly in about six inches from her face and blast her right between the eyes with a bio-electric sting. It was the straw that broke the camel's back and she collapsed to the ground. Cap scooped her up in the fireman's carry. She weighed a lot more than he would have imagined, and even her breasts felt hard as rock, but Cap could power clean over 800 pounds and had no difficulty carrying her.

The only member of the Syndicate still standing was Hyperion, focusing his atomic eye blasts on Thor, but the Thunder God's whirling war hammer absorbed the blast.

"Why won't you die!" The powerful superhuman screamed in frustration.

"Base Varlet!" Thor bellowed "Thou canst stand against the might of a warrior born!"

"Why don't you quote some more Shakespeare, you long haired weirdo!" The frustrated villain growled sarcastically, straining to increase the power of his atomic eye blasts.

"Ahem." Cap cleared his throat, causing Hyperion to lose his concentration and stop blasting.

From the look on Hyperion's face he knew the situation he was in. Cap still had Power Princess and she wasn't even stirring yet. Falcon was holding the unconscious Hawk-dude upright by his pony tail. Iron-man was floating three feet off the ground holding a cursing Speed Demon by one leg. He electrocuted him, abruptly cutting off the flowing profanity. The Wasp had grown to full size and was admiring the Power Prism as if it were the Hope Diamond while Dr. Spectrum lay in a crumpled heap. Hawkeye had Golden Archer in a headlock and was repeatedly punching him in the face while screaming "Never, never, never, never, never..."

It wasn't a good day to be Hyperion.

After a brief struggle that played out like the beating of Rodney King, Hyperion was face down on the pavement groaning something unintelligible about Caesars ghost or Argon. Cap's fist still hurt from punching Power Princess so he had used his shield on Hyperion. Thor had beaten him with Mjolner. Falcon Had beaten him with Hawk-boy's mace. Iron-man had just plain beat him. Wasp had stung him until she lost feeling in her fingers. Hawkeye had only watched the festivities, laughing like a hyena, so he was the only one that wasn't tired and sweaty.

"That looked like fun." He commented as he kicked the unconscious Golden Archer.

There was a sound of polite applause nearby.

"Well done. Oh yes. Well done." The voice was electronically disguised, sounding vaguely like a digitized Kiefer Sutherland.

All of the Avengers turned to see a red cloaked figure that had opposed them many times during the years... the Crimson Cowl.

"Not again." Hawkeye groaned.

Cap stared down the Cowl. It was impossible to determine the Cowl's age, sex, or race underneath the layered disguise. The Syndicate had spent months running bank robberies, murder for hire rackets, prostitution rings, and a score of other crimes. This individual was an unknown quantity.

"What do you want?" Cap asked in a low voice holding out an arm to hold Thor back. They couldn't just attack this person for showing up at a crime scene in a costume.

"It is not a matter of what I want, Captain." The Cowl said reasonably "What matters here is what you want."

"I don't have time for cryptic comments." Cap said plainly. "I have criminals that need to be taken into custody."

"Oh? You will not be doing that today, Captain." The Cowl said confidently.

In that split second he knew that he had to subdue this person, but did not know if slinging his shield at him was the right answer. There could be a feeble old man under that cloak and cowl. He turned to the Wasp, who's stings could subdue with minimal harm, only to see that she was staring blankly into space. So were the rest of the Avengers.

"What have you done to them!" Cap yelled as he leapt forward, but the cloaked figure spun away from him with surprising speed.

"I have done nothing, Captain. The colorless gas that was released, however, has."

"You've gassed us!" Cap yelled furiously circling his surprising opponent.

"Yes. I am surprised, although not disappointed, that you have not felt the effects that have even worked to a measure against a God. That must be due to the Serum that makes you so unique. It always has slowed poisons, though, hasn't it?"

Cap was beginning to feel drowsy, and his vision was blurring around the edges.

"Today is not the day for this battle, Captain. Today is not the day for our confrontation. Our war will come, make no mistake about that. It will come at a time and place of my choosing."

Captain America began to feel as if his arms were cast in drying cement, and sweat rolled down his forehead as he strained against it. The Cowl strolled up to him, mere inches away, but he couldn't reach the villain. The Cowl was inches away from his ear when it whispered.

Then all was black.

* * *

"This is a total debacle!" Iron-man shouted.

"What the hell happened?" Hawkeye groaned from his stretcher. He had been the last to recover, and the paramedics had been worried that he never would.

Biohazard teams in full body suits still scrambled around the airport, looking for the source of the gas. All the NYPD, FDNY, and FBI at the scene were wearing protective masks. The Wasp was still sitting down and breathing oxygen from a tank, Hank Pym by her side with one hand on her shoulder. Thor paced back and forth, slapping his hammer into his hand. He had still not spoken. Falcon was speaking with a young woman from the NYPD who recognized him from his Senate campaign, but he couldn't sit up yet.

Cap stared into the intense lights of the media's cameras. He had insisted on taking responsibility for this mess, and now was the time to eat some crow.

"In light of the unsuccessful apprehension of the suspects and other events this day, the Avengers pledge to redouble their efforts to bring these criminals to justice so that they can face the consequences of their criminal actions."

He was, to all outward appearances, strong and confident, but inside he was boiling with rage and he was physically weak from the effects of the gas.

"What was the cause of your defeat today!?" One insistent reporter yelled.

"What did the Syndicate use to defeat Earth Mightiest Heroes!?"

"There are rumors that the Syndicate have access to weapons of mass destruction and used them against you! Can you confirm this?!"

"Captain! Do the Geneva Conventions apply to actions against Super Villains?"

He could not answer their questions without giving credence to them, so he simply finished his statement and turned away from the yelling mob held back by a police barrier.

Cap walked back and instantly caught Iron-man's glare. They had shared the exact same glare when they first came to and were informed that the Syndicate had jumped on a plane to Colorado and attacked the Vault. They had sprung several minor Superhuman prisoners that had turned out to be doubles for other members of the Squadron Supreme. This included an amphibious mutant that had been defeated by Namor in Canada as well as former wrestler/criminal Screaming Mimi. They had never seen the connection, but then again they had not been looking.

The media was eating them alive. A Fox News reporter wasn't even bothering to try to interview Cap, simply talking into his own camera saying derogatory things about the Avengers. They had been sore at Cap for more than three years since he refused to verbally support the President during "a time of crisis." It was not that he had spoken against the administration. He simply had not spoken for it. During the war his actions had spoken louder than his words, but it seemed that in the information age actions weren't good enough. They wanted to know where you stood on every issue these days. He held back his urge to smash every camera pointed at him and looked to Tony again. The glare that they had shared when the word "Vault" was mentioned showed that not everything was resolved between them.

They needed to talk.

* * *

"This was a disaster." Captain America told the assembled Avengers in the meeting room.

They had tried to go back to the hideout where they had located the Syndicate the first time and found that it had been leveled by a bomb blast. FDNY was all over it, and there was nothing that they could do but leave. They had no evidence, no leads, and no hope.

"It had seemed too easy, and it was too easy." Cap said to them. "If Hank hadn't come exactly when he did who knows what could have happened to us."

"It... didn't seem like they were intent on hurting you." Hank said in a tone of voice that made it plain that he thought it was strange. "Even though Golden Archer kicked Hawkeye in the nuts."

"So that's what happened." Hawkeye said, holding an icepack in his lap.

"We all knew coming in to this, and have found over the years, that you can go from hero to zero very quickly in the eyes of others." Cap continued "We didn't get into this business for the adulation. Every single one of us is here to make the world a better place."

They all looked to him, humans and gods alike, as if he had all the answers.

"That is why at times like this we have to circle the wagons. We're all that we've got, and we need to stand by each other. Nobody else is going to stand up for us, because they depend on us to stand up for them. The next time the Syndicate sticks their heads out of a crack we are going to make them sorry that they were ever born. For now, we have to plan and prepare so that a day like this doesn't happen again."

"What about the Cowl." Iron man asked, his anger evident.

"We can't forget about him, but he literally could be anyone." Cap said, seeing Jarvis come in with a tea service. "Ultron,... Kang... The Red Skull... Baron Zemo... Rick Jones..."

Even the grim-faced Thor got a laugh out of that one.

"Hey, Jarvis." He said in a lighthearted tone "You aren't the Crimson Cowl again, are you?"

Jarvis looked shocked "No... no... Sir... not in some years."

"Anybody else here ever been the Crimson Cowl?" Cap asked in all seriousness.

Hank raised his hand slowly. Everybody stared at him as he shrugged.

"Mind control." Hank admited with another shrug.

Then Hawkeye fidgeted in his seat a bit before raising his hand as well. Everybody's eyes turned to him and he snorted at the scrutany.

"It was only for a little while!" Hawkeye grumbled.

"Well, that says about everything." Cap said gravely "We can't take this menace lightly. We need to shake down every hoodlum in the city, hack into every computer, and shake every tree. There is somebody out there who knows who the Cowl is, and they are going to be much easier to find. Right now we are stumbling in the dark, people. We need to make sure that we don't make a mistake."

"What's the first step?" Janet Van Dyne asked.

Cap admired the Wasp more than he would ever tell her, and even though her chairmanship of the Avengers ended in disaster he felt that she was a better leader than she knew. Her singular gift was knowing that the journey of a thousand miles began with a first step. The same professionalism that had made her such a success as Hank's lab assistant all those years ago was what had driven her entire heroic career. Yet all anybody ever saw of her was her fashion sense and fun loving personality. Steve could see the person beneath all that.

"Whoever this Cowl is, I have a feeling that he travels in the upper crust. Jan, I want you and Tony to investigate all the millionaires who were in town this weekend. Attend their parties and social gatherings if you have to, but do everything you can to get a feel for them." They looked at each other, then back to Cap and nodded.

"Hank. I want you to handle the electronic investigation. I know that you have a vested interest in proving that the Cowl is not Ultron. Also, get Scott to help you out looking in all the nooks and crannies. I know that the Cowl didn't come out of a cornfield. There is an electronic trail somewhere." Hank met his eyes without flinching and nodded, but Steve could tell that he was disappointed about something else. It seemed as if he just couldn't make anyone happy today.

"Falcon. The streets are ours. The Cowl identifies with lowlifes. That much is obvious from his association with the Syndicate. You don't get far as a criminal mastermind without some crimes to profit from. We're going to follow the money. I don't care what we have to do to get those hoodlums talking."

"I gotcha, Steve." Falcon said.

"Thor. I know that you have many concerns, but could I ask you to stay in the mansion as a guest for a few days? We need to be a first responder in case anything happens while we are investigating."

"What about me?" Hawkeye asked tossing his ice pack to Jarvis.

"I never could tell you what to do, Hawkeye. Go out there and cause some trouble."

"I knew that there was a reason I liked you, old man." Hawkeye laughed.

As the meeting was adjourned Cap peeled off his mask and blew a sigh of relief. That had gone so much better than he thought it would. He wiped the sweat off of his brow and took the bottles water that Jarvis offered him.

"I guess that means that its just you and me tonight, huh?" The Falcon said as Cap drank down a huge gulp of water.

"I wouldn't have it any other way, Sam."

The Falcon smiled that _I never could stay mad a you _grin.

"Nobody else wanted to ask, but what did the Cowl whisper to you right before the lights went out?" Sam asked as they got ready to go out on patrol.

_"Ex Libris Opresso." _Steve said.

"Come again?"

"Its Latin. It means 'Liberate the oppressed' and is the motto of the US Special forces."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that he is a fanatic." Cap said evenly "A fanatic that believes that the Syndicate represents an oppressed people."

* * *

It was a long day that followed a long night, but by 3 AM the next night Steve's head hit his pillow at Avenger's mansion. He had gingerly peeled off his star spangled uniform and carefully draped it over a chair. His entire body hurt. Even his hair hurt. As he lay down on the bed he could feel his bones crackle and then start to throb as they settled. His body was spotted with scrapes and bruises, and his right hand was visibly swollen. During countless shakedowns and interrogations throughout the night the punks on the street had felt lucky. A few of them had even got in lucky punches. The key is always in not letting them know the lucky punches hurt. He figured he had probably been punched about 15 times by Speed Demon before he hit the ground, althoughhe had not felt it until the adrenaline wore off. That was just the start of his day. His body had absorbed fifty or so assorted blows today. Just another day at the office.

Two of the worst punks had been a lowlife pimp named Piranha Jones and the ringleader of an underground boxing ring named Manslaughter Marsendale. Jones had bitten him with his steel teeth. If he hadn't been wearing his protective uniform those shark-like teeth would have shredded his forearm into hamburger. He had clamped on like a pit bull and wouldn't let go until the Falcon hit him with a aluminum baseball bat that he had taken from one of his thugs. He had given them zip before being turned over to the cops. Marsendale had been worse. He was a man who had the ability to feel pain surgically removed, so the only way to subdue him was basically to cripple him. Even that was tough to do. Once he was down for the count he laughed at his gruesome injuries. A hard man to interrogate, without a doubt.

Days like this made him feel like a seventy year old man who had been in 15 car wrecks. He was exhausted by almost two straight days of nonstop running, jumping, kicking, and punching. There was no need for him to wake at 4 for his training hours, because the amount of physical activity this day more than exceeded that training requirement. He might lift some weights or go for a run later in the day, but he was going to sleep in for once. Sam probably wouldn't wake up until the afternoon. As tough as he was, Sam was a normal man and not a super soldier. Sometimes people would be amazed what a normal man could do. As he drifted to sleep Steve Rogers could swear that he heard a haunting melody of big band music, scratchy from the vibrating needle of the phonograph, like a ghostly song of bygone days.

When he slept he always dreamed, but when he woke those dreams were forgotten.

* * *

There were truths of life that a soldier learned that perhaps no one else ever figured out. The biggest one of these is that happiness is getting enough sleep. That is all. The only time a soldier is happy is when he's in the sack. Another was that a shower is the second closest thing to heaven. So could anyone blame Steven Rogers for smiling as he stood in the steaming shower rubbing Irish Spring over his bruised body? There had been various showering and bathing mishaps in the mansion over the years, not the least of which the one involving She-Hulk and Hawkeye, but it was still one of the world's best places to stand in the rain-locker. Such moments of privacy were few and far between for Steve, so he treasured them more. All that being said, he was not surprised when he stepped out of the shower and saw Jarvis' face looking out from where his reflection should have been in the mirror.

"Sir, you have a telephone call in the parlor from a Ms. Rosenthal. Would you like me to take a message?" The holographic image of the butler said.

"Tell her I will only be a moment, Jarvis." Steve said, wrapping a towel around his middle and drying his hair with another one.

It seemed an odd time for her to call, as it was approaching noon. Maybe she wanted to have lunch? That would be too much to hope for. He swiftly lathered up and shaved off his rough beard stubble with quick swipes of his razor. He wondered what he could wear if she did want to have lunch. It was not something that he worried about too often. He would think of something, though. He always did.

* * *

Bernie had no idea why she had chosen Palliachi's Deli, but for some reason it had seemed like a better idea than Subway. She hadn't seen Steve since that late night call two days ago and she was worried about him. They were tearing him apart on the news, with continuous replays of the airport footage. They especially liked to show the police running around in gas masks and the Wasp huffing oxygen while sitting on a stretcher. It was national news and the cable news channels were not letting go of it. MSNBC had a correspondent at the Vault doing a story on Amnesty International's protest when Hyperion had hit the west wall like a missile. That footage was second only to Cap publicly admitting failure. She knew that he was only trying to be honest, but it had stirred up a firestorm of bad press that hadn't been seen since the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver joined the team. They weren't even this upset at the Avengers when the Vision tried to conquer the world.

She almost didn't recognize Steve when he walked in. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a pair of wrap-around shades that he must have bought on a street corner. She smiled so wide and almost laughed when she saw him. It was as if he was trying to show her that he wasn't wearing his costume under his street clothes and obviously wasn't carrying his shield. She stood up and gave him a hug as he approached the table. She could see bruises on his arms as he wrapped her in a gentle embrace. She had to stop herself from kissing him on the lips like they used to. Her memory of the passionate warmth overrode her good sense, but those days were gone. She had to keep telling herself that. She pressed the side of her face against his shoulder as her breasts pressed against the rock-hard muscles of his midriff. Why did he have to be so tall?

"Thank you for coming again, Bernie." Steve said as they broke the embrace.

"I told you, Steve. I'm glad we're talking again."

As they ordered he felt once again that feeling that they should be talking about something more important, but it wasn't always easy to figure out what should be said. He realized for the first time that she was wearing a ring on her left hand, and his stomach sunk when he saw it. Suddenly he felt very stupid and even a little bit angry at himself for the way he had been thinking. They hadn't said a thing about it, and he didn't know any way to bring it up that wouldn't either sound like an accusation or an invitation to fight. Things had been going too good, and maybe some things were too good to be true. As she looked at him he averted his gaze quickly.

They waited in silence for a moment after the waiter left, and he hoped that she would say something. Anything at all would do. If she didn't say something he didn't know how much longer he could go on with this.

"What's wrong, Steve?" She finally asked.

"Nothing. Everything. I don't know."

"We've been talking a lot about your past. Is there more that you feel like you need to tell me?"

Steve was reluctant to go into this, but there was only one thing that came to mind.

"Bernie... do you remember the first time that you ever felt like you were in love?" He finally said.

"Well... I don't know..." She was put totally off balance by that question.

"I do." Steve said, taking off his shades "I'll never forget."

* * *

1937 became 1938 faster than Steve could have imagined. Where did that year go? He would never know. It was a mystery of time that some times seemed to fly by without anything to show their passing while others seemed to last forever and leave scars that never healed. The summer he turned 16 was one of those that he wished would never end. It might have been the first time in his life that he had some sense of worth, or even a sense of himself. Unfortunately, all good things had to come to an end. That was one thing that Steve would learn the hard way over the coming years.

Nothing lasts forever.

The entire year had been bad news on the newsreels, as Hitler crushed Czechoslovakia and then said something along the lines of "Oh, no. I won't conquer anything else." He had said the same thing after the Rhineland. Japan and Italy withdrew from the league of nations and his father insisted that everything was coming apart. Things at school only got marginally better, as he went from being bullied to being ignored. Just like at home, he had learned to survive by being invisible. The events in Europe were eating his father alive. He had never seen him care about something so much. It would not make any sense to Steve, not even after all the years through which he would see things much stranger, how he could have been brought to a time of absolute happiness by a series of unfortunate events. If he had not been so lonely that he walked home by himself, he would not have been beaten up and Mr. Pulaski would not have saved him. Then if Mr. Pulaski had not hurt his back after his tire went flat he never would have worked for him. Then If Mr. Pulaski had not had his heart attack he might never have found happiness at all.

Maybe that would have been better for everybody.

That March, when Mr. Pulaski didn't show up for work one day Steve feared the worst. He had never missed a day in all the time that they had worked together . When he asked his supervisor what had happened he said that Mr. Pulaski was in the hospital. Steve must have ran 10 blocks on his scrawny, chicken legs to see him. He ran until he was sweating liquid fire and his lungs felt like they were filled with boiling acid. When he stopped running just outside the hospital, he had fallen to one knee and vomited on the pavement. A man and woman offered to help him into the hospital, but he had just pushed past them and marched into the emergency room. The nurse had told him that he was on the fourth floor, with none of the hassle that you would expect when entering a hospital these days. As he walked down the hall a doctor smoking a pipe told him that he had vomit on his shirt and handed him a handkerchief.

He ran up the stairs two at a time, people looking at him the whole time as if he was a madman. He was determined to get to the fourth floor even if it killed him. If Mr. Pulaski was going to die it wasn't going to be before he could tell him the way he really felt. How he was his only friend and the time that they were working together was the only happy times he could remember since his brother left. Even at the top of the stairs, torn to shreds by exhaustion, he continued to run for the door.

"Mr.... Pulaski..." he gasped as he came through the door and saw him laying in the only bed of a fearfully white room.

"Grant!" The man said weakly. He smiled widely but looked very pale.

"Are... you all right?" Steve wheezed.

"I'm fine, Grant. Sit down before you have heart attack."

Steve collapsed into the chair by the bed and tried not to pass out.

"You ran here so far just to see me?" Mr. Pulaski smiled.

"Yes..." Steve panted "I was worried."

"Is only heart attack." Mr. Pulaski laughed weakly "They give me pills, tell me to not eat butter, and send me on way. I'll be back on route next day."

They talked for a long while, as they did almost every day of the week. The topics seemed to jump all over the place as the attention spans of old men and young men alike seemed to. It was only in that period between that focus and keeping oneself on task seemed all important. It could be cars one moment and baseball the next. Who was better, Ty Cobb or Babe Ruth? Who made a better car, Ford or Chrysler? Who would win in a fight, Sullivan or Jones? Steve didn't even know until Mr. Pulaski said something that they were not alone.

"When are you gonna come in say hello to Grant, eh?" Mr. Pulaski grunted toward the doorway, causing Steve to turn around.

Like Steve would tell Bernie more than 60 years later, there were some moments in life that you would never forget. Seeing the girl that smiled shyly from the doorway was one of them. She had brown hair the color of leaves in late November and stunning green eyes that seemed more to belong to the springtime. A splash of freckles lay across her nose and she seemed to have a slight blush to her cheeks. She must have been a year or so older than him, but not much. She wore no make-up but was beautiful anyway and suddenly he felt very insecure. He stood up very quickly and clutched his baseball cap in front of his chest like he saw cowboys do in the movies when meeting a lady. She smiled when she saw it. He saw everything he had ever wanted in her smile that day.

"Sara, this is Grant." Mr. Pulaski croaked "Grant, my daughter Sara."

* * *

"You never told me anything about her before." Bernie said evenly.

"There are... a lot of things I never told anyone." Steve responded almost glumly.

"What was she like?"

"She was wonderful."

"Really?"

"You have no idea."

"What made her so special?"

"She was the only girl I had ever met that didn't either look down on me or look through me."

"I have a hard time believing that any girl would ever do that to you."

"That is the thing. I wasn't me. I was just Steve Rogers."

"Steve... no matter what you were always you."

"You don't understand, Bernie. I was an entirely different person in more ways that you know. It was more than just not having the Super Soldier serum to turn me into a physical Adonis. I was weak on the outside then but I felt broken on the inside. At 16 I hadn't ever kissed a girl or so much as held her hand. I know that is laughable these days but it is true. My only friend was a broken down old cab driver and without my brother I felt totally lost. I was just doing the minimum I had to do to get through the day without catching a beating from somebody."

Steve was speaking in a low voice, leaning forward over their lunch so he could not have been overheard by Daredevil. There was a deep shame in his expression and Bernie didn't know what to say.

"Steve... that little boy with no friends grew into an extraordinary man admired the world over. That doesn't just happen by accident." She said just as softly.

"Sometimes it does." Steve said with a smile "Sometimes life is just a series of lucky accidents."

* * *

Steve had no idea why he tripped down those stairs.

After being awkwardly introduced and exchanging some small talk he had politely excused himself from the hospital room under the pretext of leaving the family alone. As he splashed water on his face to wash off the drying sweat he looked himself in the mirror and cursed the idiot that was looking back at him. He must have seemed so damn stupid. He hoped that she had not seen him blush when she said it was nice to meet him. Two heads, both belonging to Steve Rogers, butted together three times with only the mirror between them. He must have looked like a fool when he reached out to shake her hand and she had stood there waiting for him to do something with the hand. She had looked at him quizzically until he dropped it like a dead fish and then she had laughed a laugh like peals of a Christmas sleigh bell.

When he walked out of the bathroom, he looked back one last time to the room. He saw her looking back at him with a smile on her face. She winked at him playfully and gave him a little wave. The greater part of him froze in place but his feet kept moving. He had kept looking back at her even as he walked toward the stairs. The next thing he knew, he was at the bottom of the stairs with a doctor and two nurses all around him. His leg was in agony and he didn't know what had happened.

Sometimes there was no better place to get hurt than a hospital, because as luck would have it he was put into the room right next to Mr. Pulaski. Steve had fractured his leg in three places during his fall down the stairs and was in traction with a hard cast. In all the misadventures that plagued his life he had never felt like more of a turkey. His mother and father had come at different times to visit him, horrified by what had happened as much as by what the hospital was charging. Jack Rogers was ready to jump down the hospital administrator's throat about not having handrails on the stairs, as if such a subtle lawsuit threat would work in his favor to reduce the bill.

That week he spent in the hospital was heaven, though. Not only could he just sit around and draw all day (and they were not scrimping on the paper or pencils here) but he was also got frequent visits from Mr. Pulaski. Once he started responding to his medicine and getting stronger they let him walk from room to room. They talked about the Dodgers and the Yankees until they were blue in the face. The other side of that was that Sara visited her father every day, and smiled at him every time she walked by his room. He held his breath until she was out of sight, so embarrassed that he could actually asphyxiate himself instead of talk to her. Until that one day that she finally came into his room.

"Hello." She said. It seemed as good a start as any.

"Er... hello." he responded, dropping the pad that he had been drawing on.

"I just came to see how you were and sign your cast." She said with a grin.

"That... would be nice." Steve said, trying to subtly hide the page.

"What are you drawing there?"

"Nothing." Steve said, trying with all of his mental might to disappear.

She somehow got her hands of the picture he had been drawing. It was her face that had haunted his thoughts as he drew the freckled face, and he had just been hatching in some shading. He held his breath and hoped that she wouldn't notice the resemblance.

"This is... very good!" She exclaimed. "You can really draw!"

"It isn't that... well... its good." He stumbled.

"How are you feeling? Does it still hurt?" She said as she sat down on his bed and took the pencil to his cast.

"It hurts a little." He said honestly.

"When do they say that you can walk out of here? My papa gets to leave today." She smiled as she kept writing. Was she writing a novel on his cast?

"I still have to be here for a few days."

"So... Tuesday."

"Maybe Tuesday."

"Do you think that you would be ready to go on a date by Friday?"

Steve's world stopped with a big clunk and he just looked at her.

"I know what you're thinking. Maybe I should just bat my eyelashes and twirl my parasol until you ask me, but... don't you want to go out?"

Steve stammered. What was this noise that was coming out of his mouth.

"Say something!" She laughed. "It isn't the easiest question, I know, but there are only two possible answers."

"You don't know me at all..." He heard himself saying.

"Isn't that what dating is for?"

"Er..."

"I feel like I know you already, anyway, because papa talks about you so much. He says that you are a nice boy and he doesn't say that about any boy." She finished up her writing with a firm period that made him wince.

"Really?"

"Oh, yes."

Steve felt utterly powerless to say anything other than "Yes."

"Yes, what?" she shamelessly fished.

"Yes, Sara, I would like to go out with you."

"Swell! I'll see you on Tuesday then!" She said happily, springing up from the bed.

"But... but.. what will we do?" Steve was stammering again.

"Lets worry about things when they become worries, Grant!" The name she called him reminded him of his duplicity and he almost corrected her before he remembered it.

She was walking out of the room, a spring in her step, when he cried out "Wait."

"Oh, Grant, I'm sorry but I need to help papa pack up his things. Beside that, I need to ask his permission."

Steve's heart almost leapt out of his throat. She was going to tell Mr. Pulaski that they were going out. He felt like he was floating in the ocean on one of those donut shaped lifesaving things except the air was leaking out of it. He remembered the one time that he had seen Mr. Pulaski angry, when a man ran a stop sign and hit his cab. He had been a bloated, purple apparition that had terrified Steve's dreams.

_Gulp._

She must have seen it on his face. "Oh, don't worry. He'll really be pleased!"

"I hope so." he said softly.

"I'll see you on Tuesday." She promised again, and then left.

Steve was stunned for a moment, and then realized that if he hadn't had a cast on his leg he would have jumped with joy! He had a date! A real date! With Sara! Was all of this a dream? When he pinched himself he didn't wake up. When he looked down to the words that she wrote on his cast he almost couldn't believe that they were there.

_To: Grant_

_From: Sara_

_Thank you for everything that you have done all of these years. You are my father's hero and you are my hero too. My entire family is grateful to know such a kind and selfless person and we all hope that you get well soon._

The entire message was in a circled heart with an arrow through it.

* * *

"So she spied on you, embarrassed you, broke your leg, and when you couldn't run away pinned you down and brow beat you until you agreed to go on a date."

Steve was silent for a moment.

"Yes, that sums it up pretty good." Steve admitted.

Bernie laughed at that. "She sounds really special."

"She was." Steve said quietly.

It was that sense of finality that made Bernie feel badly for teasing Steve like that. Sara was obviously one of the people he was talking about. One of the people that he missed so much and certainly was long dead. It was as if she could actually feel herself shrink until she was 2 feet tall.

She was about to say something when they were interrupted.

"Hello, Mr. Rogers."

Steve almost sprung to his feet, not to be taken unaware, and almost knocked over the approaching man who had greeted him.

"Whoa!" The man gasped, almost dropping his briefcase. He was wearing an expensive suit and tie that seemed to ooze money. His Brillcrème comb-over was the biggest indication that he did not want to look as old as he was, and obviously did not present a physical threat to Steve.

"Excuse me, sir." Steve said "You startled me."

"I perfectly understand Mr. Rogers, and in your line of business your impressive reflexes must come in handy."

"You know my name sir, but might I ask yours?" Steve did not seem outwardly hostile as much as stiffly formal. This was not an interruption that he welcomed.

"My name is Miles Thurman." He said, presenting his business card. "I would like to talk to you about very important events of the day and where you..."

"Republican National Committee?"

"Yes, sir. I represent the interests of the President of the United States in this matter. We have sent you multiple communiqués on this matter but I think that sometimes the personal approach is the best..."

"Sir. I am afraid that I can't help you today, and as you can see I'm having lunch with the lady. If the President needs something from me I can be contacted at Avengers Mansion in the event of a national emergency." Steve was edging toward hostile.

"Mr. Rogers. I am afraid that I cannot leave without at least scheduling a meeting about his manner. You know how important this election is and your President is asking for your support."

"If you will not leave, Mr. Thurman, than I suppose that I must." Steve said, throwing money on the table and offering his hand to Bernie She took it and was almost ripped out of her seat by the force of his assistance.

As they began to walk away Mr. Thurman became visibly upset and other people at the Deli were staring and whispering.

"You can't just walk away from me Rogers! Just like you can't walk away from the President." Thurman was on the verge of raising his voice. He was obviously not a man used to being rebuffed.

"I do not endorse candidates for political office." Steve said as he continued walking, but Thurman pursued.

"That is bull and you know it, Rogers." Thurman was starting to flush red.

Steve whirled around and faced him "I have been over this with you and men like you before. I am not a politician. I'm just a citizen and a soldier, and my vote counts as much as anybody else's. I will not attempt to use my notoriety to subvert the democratic process."

"It isn't right to change a horse midstream." Thurman said with a wide smile. "Do you remember those words, Rogers?"

It took all of Steve's self control not to sneer as Thurman snapped open his briefcase and pulled out what had to be the world's oldest issue of the New York Times with the huge headline "Cap for Roosevelt."

"In 1944 Roosevelt carried the election even amid controversy about his fourth term. A lot of people gave credit to this "November surprise" where you told the nation that a change of office in the middle of a war would be disastrous. Now in 2004 a REPUBLICAN President is looking to have to transfer his power in the middle of a war and suddenly you are non-partisan!" Thurman was yelling now, his comb-over flopping.

"Mr. Thurman!" Steve yelled back, the force of it causing the lobbyist's face to blanch. "I don't know if you heard me the first time. I do not endorse candidates for political office! This is not 1944, and the man in the White House is NOT pertinent to this argument! I have been endowed with a special trust by the American people and I trust them in turn to choose the representative that is best for the country. I believe in America and I believe in Democracy. The people's voice will be heard without my interference and nothing that you can say, do, or show will change my mind!"

"Rogers..." Thurman growled.

"Good day, sir!" Steve said sharply and he opened the door for Bernie and assisted her on her way out. The second that he stepped out, his arm went to hail a taxi.

All through the Deli there was clapping and cheers, cries of "You tell 'em Cap!" and "You go, Buddy!" and "Whattya thinka that ya hoser!"

Thurman pursued him out onto the bustling street. "Rogers! I'll expose you for the liar you are! You are a shameless liberal! You are an enemy of freedom! Either you are for what this country stands for or you are a friend of the Terrorists! Rogers! You come back here you goddamn..."

His voice was cut off by the slamming door of the taxicab.

"Good god." Steve said after a moment as they drove off. "I'm so sorry about that, Bernie."

"Its ok." Bernie breathed "I understand how it must be like."

"I wish that I didn't." Steve said.

"I know that you admired Roosevelt..."

"It wasn't about that by then. I'm not ready to talk about that." Steve said "Maybe we shouldn't talk about anything anymore. Maybe the past should stay buried."

"Steve... that can't be good for you or for anyone."

"How should I know what's good for anyone? I don't even know what's best for myself."

Bernie kissed Steve on the cheek again when he let her off near her office. There was none of the tension of the first kiss but none of the guilty pleasure of it either. He seemed very cold and distracted wrestling with ghosts that only he could see. She hugged him as hard as she could but his arms did not close on her with such firmness. She knew that she didn't have the strength to hold him, and it broke her heart. As the cab pulled off she sighed deeply and turned on her cell phone. She would have to report that disaster at the deli and what it meant. She couldn't convince Steve when so many others were trying to pull him in the other direction. Were they on to what she was trying to do? Did they suspect and plan that ambush? There was no way to know.

"I already know. Steps have been taken." The voice on the other end of the phone said.

"I don't know what to do." Bernie said, feeling tears in her eyes and hoping that they didn't reach her voice.

"Do what you do best. Keep working on him. Get him to see things our way. He already shares our views you just have to get him past his own nobility."

"He trusts me... I just don't want to violate his trust."

"You have to make him see that there are lives on the line, not to mention the credibility of the nation. He could change everything for the better with just one word, and he has to realize that."

"Bernie. You know that we cannot afford another four years of this. Steve can make sure that doesn't happen. You are doing a good job. I'll make sure that no more attack dogs mess things up."

There was a click, ending the conversation.

Bernie held the cell phone to her head and squeezed her eyes shut to hold in the tears. The words that he had spoken, with such passion, burned in her head. He believed it so very much, and here she was, trying to use him. Trying to change him. All because she had a blue card in her wallet instead of a red one. As she walked to her office, all that she could think of was that vacant look in his eyes and that rage in his voice when he spoke. She knew without a doubt what would happen if Steve discovered what she had been asked to do, and what she had agreed to do so gladly.

If he ever found out it would be the end.

**Next: The Experiment**

_How will Cap track down the Sinister Syndicate? Who is the Crimson Cowl? What is troubling Tony Stark? Who wants to destroy Cap's reputation? What is the real reason that Steve tried to join the Army? Tune in next week, True Believer!_


	5. Second Chance

_Author's note: Thank all of you who have posted reviews and sent e-mails. I'll do my best to crank one of these out every week. I'm sorry that this one is a little long and doesn't cast any more light on Steve's past, but I hope that it still casts light on who Steve really is. I'll make up for it next week._

_D_

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Chapter Four: Second Chance**

Tony and Janet walked arm and arm down the red carpet where all the guests were flanked with a legion of reporters shouting questions. They both smiled and waved as they entered, as was expected of them. All the time they had spent appearing in public together the last two weeks had caused a feeding frenzy among the gossip columnists. Such headlines as "The Wasp: why she needs an Iron Man" and "Hank Pym on his way out?" were not uncommon. Hank had not said a word about it, but they both knew that it bothered him. It seemed like he was always shut up in his lab scouring the internet for clues, only coming out to confer with Scott Lang on his investigations. He had not forgotten the affair they had while he was in prison. Neither had they. It didn't seem like the gossip rags had either. It was a total mess and why Cap had this idea in the first place mystified them.

"Are you ready, Jan?" Tony asked as he put a gentle hand on the small of her back.

"Always ready for a party, Tony." She responded, an insincere smile brushing her lips.

Once inside, the relative safety of the party within seemed a respite from the circus outside despite the fact that it was like swimming with sharks. This corporate party thrown by Roxxon oil had snakes in tuxedos from all 500 fortune 500 companies as well as quite a collection of wannabes. All of them seemed to have a much younger and more attractive significant other on their arm, and it made Jan feel silly as well as a little insecure. She wondered if Pepper Potts ever felt this way when Tony was dragging her to every soiree in town. Her strapless, backless black dress looked like something that a Mafioso's girlfriend would wear to a funeral, but for some reason she had the suspicion that Mr. Blackwell and the Rivers' would approve. Black was elegant, simple, and went wonderfully with her complexion.

As they mingled, Tony got the feeling that he was wading hip deep through slime. All the scumbags were here. The corporate raiders that were chipping at the corners of his company, Including Cord international and the Brand Corp. The largest among them were the vultures who had taken over Stane International. It had been his father's company, bearing his father's name, and he had lost it. Obadiah Stane had taken it from him when his alcoholism was at its peak. Now Stane was dead, but his company lived on making weapons of mass destruction and calling it "Defense contracting." The Stane executives waved to him and it took all of his self control not to give them the finger. Now they were buying every scrap of Stark Industries stock that wasn't nailed down, and buying it cheap. They showed up at every stockholder's meeting with smug looks on their face. They wanted his company, and they would do anything they had to in order to get it.

"Boy is it good to see some friendly faces." A relieved voice came from over Tony's left shoulder.

The Avengers turned around to see the smiling face of Kyle Richmond, the young CEO of Richmond Solutions. They both were as glad to see him as he was them. Everyone knew that Richmond was the costumed hero known as Nighthawk, just as their identities were public knowledge. Having another crime fighter here among the wolves was a great relief.

"Kyle!" Janet exclaimed as she stepped forward to hug him, a gesture that he returned and she rewarded with a kiss on the cheek.

"Richmond." Tony said more evenly as he shook his hand.

"It is great to see you two again." Kyle said as he extracted himself from the Wasp's embrace.

"What have you been doing with yourself?" Stark asked.

"The usual." Kyle shrugged. "Trying to pull my company back together and still have the flexibility to run off to save the world whenever Doc's spirit form interrupts a meeting."

"You look really good!" Janet observed "How's Patsy doing?"

"It's hard to tell with Patricia." Kyle said honestly "We've all been through hell, but in her case it was a little more... literal."

"Well, tell her hello from me, and Hank McCoy wanted to find out how to get her number the last time we talked. He wants to catch up on old times. It isn't every day that a good friend comes back from the dead." Tony said

Kyle smiled at that, and the Wasp marveled at the cute little dimple that his lopsided smile made. He looked sort of like Harrison Ford when he did that.

"Sometimes it seems to happen a lot." Kyle finally said.

"Oh... I'm sorry... I forgot." Tony coughed.

"Don't worry about it. Nobody came to the funeral, I heard, and the Defenders made my grave site invisible. It was almost as if they were sure that I'd come back. I hear that the county clerk's office had my death certificate stolen and it showed up on E-bay. Got about 200 dollars, I hear." Richmond laughed.

"Kyle, you have always had the most wonderful sense of humor about things." Jan said.

"Ms. Van Dyne, would you like to dance?" Kyle said, offering her his arm. "That is, if you would permit me, Tony?"

"Knock yourself out. I see old friends that I need to... iron out a few issues with." Tony said gravely, looking across the dance floor to where the CEO of the Brand corp. was laughing with the president of Hammer Inc.

"I would love to dance with you, Kyle." The Wasp said, taking his hand.

Kyle led Janet out to the dance floor as the band began to play "Strangers in the night."

"My favorite song." Kyle commented.

"I'm fond of it as well." Jan said as she put her hand demurely at his waistline, feeling his more toward the small of her back.

Jan loved to dance, and Kyle did it so well. Something seemed different about the reluctant crime fighter she had known all these years, but she couldn't but her finger on it. He seemed so much more confident and outgoing, much less insecure. There was only one explanation.

"Is there a young lady in your life, Mr. Richmond." She asked brazenly.

Kyle smiled "Is it that obvious?"

Jan wrinkled her nose like Meg Ryan "Just call it women's intuition."

"Well, it would be foolish to deny it, then."

"Who is she?" Jan asked.

"Special. Very special." Kyle said, but did not elaborate.

"So... why are you out on this dance floor with me, you cad?" Janet laughed as Kyle playfully dipped her.

"I wanted to talk to you about something very important." Kyle admitted.

"What?"

"The Sinister Syndicate."

Jan's blood froze, but she let it not show in her face. He knew the reason she was here?

"What about them?" Jan asked.

"I know that the subject must not be a pleasant one after what happened at the airport, but I just wanted to let you know that if the Avengers need anything from me or the other Defenders to bring them in... all you have to do is ask."

Jan bristled at that, even though he had broached the subject quite gently.

"Oh, don't get the wrong idea. It isn't that I share everybody's attitude about who's fault that was." Kyle said, sensing her displeasure. "It is just that I have a vested interest in making sure that the Syndicate goes down... hard."

"Why?" Jan asked, puzzled by the sudden rage he seemed to be barely capable of holding back.

"You don't remember?" Kyle said "Didn't Hank ever tell you about Trish?"

"Trish Starr?" Jan said with surprise, memories flooding back.

"They tried to kill me... and they crippled Trish..." Kyle sounded wracked with guilt.

"It wasn't your fault." Jan reassured him as the song concluded and they walked off the dance floor arm in arm.

"I know. It was theirs." Kyle said with conviction "I just want to make sure that they pay for it."

Jan knew exactly how Kyle felt. If the Squadron Sinister hadn't crippled Trish Starr then Hank wouldn't have allied with his greatest enemy to try and help her. Then he would not have been framed for treason and thrown in jail. As she looked at Tony from across the dance floor, she wondered what a different world this would be if that bomb blast had never happened. How much suffering and trauma had grown out of such a small tragedy, and how much could grow out of a much larger one?

* * *

It was just another afternoon at Avenger's mansion and Steve actually found himself with a little bit of time to kick up his feet. This was unusual as it seemed that his life as leader of the Avenger's always threw some kind of work his way. That evenings patrols had been uneventful and he had turned in early. After his morning training session and a combat drill with a bored and disgruntled Thunder God he found himself with free time on his hands. Stripping out of his uniform for a much-needed shower he heard a beep from the wall communicator. He sighed and pushed the button to answer it.

"Sir, you have a telephone call from Ms. Rosenthal."

"Take a message, Jarvis."

"Very well, sir."

Cap stood there shaking a minute before he savagely punched a locker, caving it in easily. The throb in the same fist he injured fighting the Syndicate immediately made him regret it. It had been a week since that expose on Fox sports that revealed Steve was meeting with Bernadette Rosenthal, who was not only a liberal activist but employed by the DNC. This led to all sorts of political speculation and dredged up his endorsement of FDR in 1944. Speculations regarding another Democratic "November Surprise" raged through the cable networks and made things a hundred times worse than they had been before. He had no choice but to call another press conference and reiterate what he had told Mr. Thurman. It had been met with disbelief and distain from the media.

Steve had not taken one of Bernie's calls since then, and he never checked his messages.

He stood in the shower lathering himself with soap until he realized that his fingerprints had turned into prunes. Who knew how long he had been in there? He sighed as he turned off the water and realized that he had been daydreaming. His lack of focus and lack of direction on days like this were what was making everyone worry about him. He was drifting aimlessly. If he didn't have a mission he didn't know what to do with himself. He found himself envying those crime fighters that maintained a secret identity with a job. At least they knew what they were doing when they took the uniform off.

Fully dressed and kicking back in the Mansion's library, Steve was reading "Once an Eagle" by Anton Myer. He read such books every so often, but neither to learn about war nor to be reminded of it. He knew war well enough, and would never need to be reminded. In the quiet watches of the night, the sights and sounds would return unbidden. He read these books to understand his own feelings on all the battlefields that he had seen. Myer's book was a masterful construction and deconstruction of a perfect soldier. Steve could easily see himself standing in the shoes of Sad Sam Damon.

_Once in the Libyan fable there was an eagle struck by an arrow. When he looked down to see that the arrow was fletched with the feathers of another eagle he lamented "By our own hands, and not the actions of others, are we struck down."_

Myer came away from the war with a solid understanding of what he had seen. He was just another Marine on that deck, looking over the rolling Pacific waters toward the hellground that the Japanese had built for them, but he had survived. Over the course of years, with the wisdom that came with age, he had understood. Now he was dead, like so many of them, leaving only his writings to pass on the message that had been ignored for far too long. "Once an Eagle" was the book that his father always wanted to write, but never could find a way to do it.

Steve closed the book and put it down, looking to the one that he had just finished. "Sympathy for the Devil" had been written by the next generation. That generation had been sent to rot in a jungle from 1964 to 1972 while he was still sleeping in a block of ice. He could sympathize with Hanson and understand his feeling that he was doomed to survive the war even as everyone was dying around him. Somebody had to live on. Somebody had to carry the message. There had never been a war where everybody died. At the same time he came to feel that the jungle was his home, the only place where anything made sense. Even though he had tried, there was no going home. Home had not changed as much as people thought, but he had.

Steve shelved the two books. Two different men of two different generations, but they both got it. They both understood and could tell the story. Is that what he had been trying to do with Bernie? Find someone who would listen to an old soldier and at least try to understand what he was putting into words? It really had been a probe, an experiment, to see if somebody could handle the truth that he had held in for so long. Never in his wildest dreams would it have occurred to him that Bernie was using him. Perhaps that was ok, because maybe he was using her too.

When he returned to his room he saw that his uniform had been laid out on the bunk by Jarvis, with his shield perfectly centered on top of it. Next to the bunk on his three drawer chest was a pitcher of ice water and a glass with a coaster as well as the evening edition of the New York Times. This was the kind of full service that most super heroes never got and Steve never felt like he needed. When Tony gave up his New York mansion all those years ago did he realize what a prize of a butler he was giving up? Why did he even think that a rowdy group of crime fighters needed a butler anyway? During the war he had needed to wash his uniform in a doggone bucket and if her was lucky he would have another one to sponge himself off with. Otherwise he would have to use the same bucket.

How did he end up with a manservant?

Cap overlooked the Times for today. It might have been better than the Daily Bugle, but he was totally sick of the media. If there was something important, Jarvis would brief him on it. Maybe he would look at it later to see what Beetle Bailey was up to. Then again, maybe not. He slid the blue pants on over his boxers, and then the long sleeved white shirt. He slipped on the red boots and made sure that they were folded down exactly three inches, as he had been doing for years. When he was finished he looked in the full-length mirror in his wall locker to make sure that there were no deficiencies in his uniform before he slipped on his mask. He was always very careful about how he dressed himself, even though not all heroes were. He still remembered the time when he was charging down Dread Knight with Spider-man and he noticed that there was a sweat sock affixed to the wall crawler's back with static cling. Since then it had been dry clean only for Cap.

When he approached the ready room he heard a thunderous yawn, and knew once again that Thor was letting his boredom get the best of him. He had never once questioned Steve's order to stand by as a reserve in case of trouble, but he knew that he was not pleased with it. Life around the mansion was truly tedious to the warrior, which is why he had never lived there. There was only so many times that the God of Thunder could polish his hammer. Idle hands were the devil's workshop.

"By the golden gates of Asgard! When shall this tedium cease!" Thor lamented as Cap entered the ready room.

"Soon enough, my friend." Cap assured the disgruntled Asgardian.

"Captain, thou art the bravest of mortals and I would follow thee into the gates of Hades. Alone among mortals are thee who might lift Mjolner, but canst thou divest the son of Odin of this wearisome task?"

"I'll tell you what, Thor. I'll give you the night off. Just pay attention to answer your card when it goes off. I'll make certain that Jarvis does not disturb you except in the most dire of circumstances."

"Captain, thou art a gentleman and warrior. I shall not fail thee in this request, but tonight there shall be MEAD!" Thor howled as he stormed out of the ready room.

With a huge gust of wind, Thor was gone. Cap chuckled at the thunder god's antics and felt a great swell of pity for whoever was running a bar that served mead in New York tonight.

"I liked the way you handled that, you old goat!" Hawkeye's mocking voice came from around the corner. The Bowman arrogantly strolled in and sat down before putting his feet up.

"Have you found out anything substantial, Hawkeye?" Cap asked.

"Well, aren't you right to the point?" Hawkeye laughed "No 'Hi Hawkeye' no 'How you doing Hawkeye' no 'Are your balls still swollen like grapefruits Hawkeye.' SHEESH!"

"Are you..."

"I'm fine! Its just that sometimes its nice to be asked."

"I'll be going out to patrol with Falcon shortly, but if you need anything let me know."

"Wrong again, Methuselah!" Hawkeye laughed "You're coming with me."

"What?" Cap was caught off guard by that comment.

"Turn up your hearing aid, gramps! I said you are coming with me tonight. Falcon is off taking care of some personal business."

"I have a few leads to check out. If you want to come along you are welcome, but..."

"I've got a better lead." Hawkeye said. "You remember that bar in upstate New York where the Scourge wasted all those losers?"

"How could I ever forget?" Cap said softly, having been the first one to arrive on the scene.

"Well, they scrubbed it up and re-opened it under new management. That by itself isn't really suspicious, but there is one thing that is..."

"What's that?"

"The new owner of the bar is Frank Schlichting."

"Why does that name sound familiar?" Cap said, scratching his chin.

"Because you typed him into the database. His name is the Constrictor."

"He was one of the Scourge's victims. One of the ones that survived."

"Exactly." Hawkeye said smugly.

"So why would he re-open the bar where the Scourge wiped out so many costumed criminals?" Cap said, turning to a computer monitor where he could access the database.

"Isn't it an intriguing mystery?" Hawkeye said, leaning even further back in his chair. Cap was doing all of his work for him.

"What does this have to do with the Syndicate?"

"Absolutely nothing, but why should we just sit around with our thumbs up our butts waiting for these losers to crawl out of whatever crack they're hiding in?"

Cap looked back at him suspiciously, one eyebrow raised. "You wouldn't just be trying to get me to go to a bar, would you?"

"Oh, no! Perish the thought! If I wanted to hang out with an Octogenarian I'd volunteer to change bed pans at the old folk's home! Here's your disguise, by the way." Hawkeye said, throwing Cap a bag of civilian clothes.

* * *

"What do you mean you were the Golden Archer!" Steve said indignantly as they pulled into the Parking lot. Hawkeye had been driving like a maniac and it had still seemed like a long trip.

"Did I stutter?" Clint Barton laughed "After they took away your Cap identity I dressed up like the Golden Archer and attacked you. I had to do something! You were just sitting on the couch feeling sorry for yourself and eating ho hos all day."

"You low down duplicitous son of a..."

"Hey now, better watch that mouth before they take away your merit badges you old boy scout. The only reason I'm telling you this is because I'm not convinced that the Golden Archer even HAS a double on the world any more than I believe that Screaming frickin' Mimi is Lady Lark's double. Somebody is combing through these sorry excuses for super villains to find people who are close enough and filling their heads with bull about how they were heroes on an alternate earth."

"You have a point. Only three people were chosen by the Grandmaster, and Hyperion evidently had to be cloned." Steve observed.

"Right." Clint said "So we got not only Golden Archer, but the winged guy and that Amazon bitch to account for."

"So you figure that just as long as we are keeping our eyes on low profile super criminals we have a chance of stumbling onto the Crimson Cowl, who is behind the Squadron?" Steve asked.

"That's about the size of it." Clint said.

"Maybe you should have named yourself Longshot." Cap grumbled.

"What kinda mullet wearing lame-o would call himself that?" Hawkeye laughed.

Steve and Clint walked through the parking lot, and Steve observed that this place had a wide variety of vehicles in front of it. It wasn't a "Biker Bar" or a "Singles bar." It had motorcycles, ferraris, minivans, and winnabagos. Whatever this place was, it appealed to a cross-section of humanity. Clint's Volkswagen beetle fit in perfectly. A huge neon sign proclaimed the name of the bar to be "Second Chance." A sign above the door proclaimed "Born of sin, come on in!"

"I don't think they're going to let you in, pops." Clint scoffed as he looked at the sign.

"We'll see about that." Steve said.

"Lighten up! You're going to walk into the bar and suck the good times right out of it."

Anybody observing the two good looking blonde guys walking into the Bar probably wouldn't give them a second look unless they were a female on the prowl. Hawkeye was wearing jeans and a leather jacket with slicked-back hair, the black t-shirt under the jacket proclaimed "Take a number" in huge white letters. He was wearing snake-skin cowboy boots and looked like he was spoiling for a fight, but he couldn't help that. He always looked ready for a fight. Steve was wearing a cable-knit sweater-vest and dress pants with a red bow tie. Hawkeye had insisted that it was all the rage in Milan to the fashion-challenged super soldier. He just wanted to see Mr. Rogers dress up like Mr. Rogers. Clint had always had a sadistic sense of humor, but it backfired on him. It didn't take him long to notice that girls were looking right through him and whispering to their friends about Steve.

"Two beers." Hawkeye said to the Bartender over the loud music, some kind of electronica that was trying to sound like techno but didn't quite get there.

"What kind." The bartender asked dryly.

"Whatever's on tap!" Clint yelled.

They sat down at the bar and waited for the beers to arrive.

"So how do we go about talking to the owner?" Steve asked.

"We just sit here and drink. I have a feeling he's going to come to us." Clint said.

"How do you know?"

"You don't have a secret identity anymore, remember?"

Steve felt his stomach fall with a thump. Why bother wearing a civilian disguise at all if he was going to be recognized? Hawkeye was using him as bait. Why did he ever agree to this?

"Loosen up, old man." Clint admonished him "You see that blonde over there? She sure sees you. I'll bet if you send her a drink her friends will shame her into coming over."

"How can you think about that at a time like this?" Cap groaned.

"There is no time like the present." Clint laughed "Check out the scenery. I'm sure that something will hold your eye."

Steve was checking out the crowd. The only thing that he could really put his finger on about everybody here is that they all seemed to be in very good shape. Men and women from a variety of races and backgrounds, but they all seemed to have something in common that brought them here. That was when he saw a familiar face. What was _she_ doing here?

"I'll be damned. Cyclops." Clint said.

"What was that?" Steve asked, pulling his gaze away from her face and looking the other way before she spotted him.

"Over there in the corner booth." Clint pointed with his thumb. "Its that X-man Cyclops."

"How can you tell from here?" Steve asked.

"How many guys do you know that wear bright red sunglasses? Cripes. He looks like he wants to drown himself in booze." Clint said as he took the two beers that the bartender brought. "I'm going over to talk to him."

"Why" Steve asked, in his mind seeing a worm wiggling on a hook.

"Because he just lost his wife. Don't you ever read the papers? I think that he could use somebody to talk to." Hawk started walking off with the beers.

Steve remembered how hard Clint had taken it when Bobbi died, and it made a kind of sense that he wanted to help one of the X-men who was going through a similar situation.

"What about my beer?"

"Its his beer now. You're too old to drink, anyway. It might give you liver spots."

* * *

Steve had acquired another beer in short order and bit right into it. He didn't give too much thought to drinking, although he did not indulge himself often. Whenever he found himself overindulging all that he had to do was think about his father. Drinking in moderation was no problem for him as his tolerance went beyond abnormally high. He could drink enough to make a late-stage alcoholic drop unconscious and just be getting tight. It always pissed Hawkeye off. Clint was a good guy, as was evident as he seemed to be gently talking to a distraught Scott Summers about what it is like to lose a wife. Clint had moved heaven and hell to get Bobby Barton back, but in time had come to accept that it wasn't meant to be. That was the hardest part. In a world where there were so many that could do so many wonderful things, the hardest thing to do was accept that something was impossible.

She saw him. He knew that she saw him. She knew that he knew that she saw him. Why hadn't she approached? Was she waiting for him? Well, she had might as well wait for hell to freeze over. He could play dumb just as well as the next guy. Besides, his beer was still half full.

"Er... hello." A small, meek voice came from behind him.

Steve turned to see the blonde girl that Hawkeye had pointed out earlier. She was smiling wide but smiling nervously. He smiled back, if only to diffuse her tension.

"I got the drink you sent me." She said, kind of swaying her hip to the left when she said it. Over his shoulder he saw Clint looking right at him with an arrogant smile wiggling his fingers as if he was doing a magic trick.

"Oh! I hoped you would." Steve said, playing along but feeling stupid just as soon as the words came out of his mouth. He didn't have to be a telepath to see what was on this young women's mind.

"Can I sit down." She asked with less confidence, biting her lower lip.

"Absolutely, please." Steve said, only then realizing that he had been standing to greet her.

As she sat down the looked at her more closely, what the hell was Hawkeye playing at? What was really going on? She was a pretty young woman, and was wearing some interesting lightning bolt earrings but too much make-up. She had a body that belonged in a fitness magazine and was almost as tall as him. If he had been a normal guy she would probably intimidate him, but it seemed like it was the other way around.

"I'm Kayla. What's your name?" She asked in her perky little voice.

"I'm Steve." He said, not wanting to be caught in a lie if she indeed knew who he was. Lying showed ill intent that could lead to sticky situations. He had to remind himself that he had no legal reason for being here.

"So what's your real name?" She said, with a conspiratorial smile.

"Come again?"

"You know... everybody in here has one. I'm Letha, my friend over there is..."

"Wait a minute..." Steve interrupted her, confronted with the name of one of the Scourge's victims. "Letha is dead."

"Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm Letha II" She said with an embarrassed smile "After I dropped out of college I didn't know what to do with myself, so I hooked up with this guy and he knew a guy who knew a guy who knew the Power Broker. Well, once I got my super strength I found out that you needed a name, but I couldn't think up one. I'm not like, a good writer or anything like that. So my friend Bill looked through old newspapers and found out about Letha. It sounded cool and she was dead, so I took it. After a while I totally hit rock bottom, because I found out that normal guys can't do anything for you anymore once you are all super . I mean, all of your muscles are super and it is so lonely. So some old friends of Letha one came to beat me up for no good reason. I totally told them to back off, but they were like "We're gonna mess you up for messing with Letha" but I was like..."

"I think that I know what you're talking about." Steve cut her off before he died of old age.

"Really!" She gasped and then smiled, big white teeth like a billboard "Are you one of those mind reading mutie freaks! I mean, I always wanted to do... I mean meet..."

"I'm not a mutant." Cap insisted, trying to remain calm even though he was facing a sexually starved valley girl who could break concrete with her bare hands.

"So what do you do! I mean, you totally looked ripped, but almost everybody does something else. Do you have, like, flamethrowers or lasers or throw ninja stars or something?"

"Something like that." Steve said, imagining his shield smacking into her face.

He was maintaining this inane conversation, but if she was implying was true he was in deep shit. Was everybody in here a costumed criminal? Underneath these normal exteriors were lurking a Steeplejack II, Melter II, Hijacker II or Turner D Century II. The mind boggled. His shield and Hawkeye's bow and arrows were in the trunk of the VW Bug, and he didn't like the chances of it not getting stolen outside of a super villain bar. He had heard of bars being gay friendly or even mutant friendly, but SUPER VILLAIN friendly? Was Hydro Man the bouncer? I heard he just got fired from a Theme Park last week.

"I like your outfit. It is like, totally the rage in Milan." She said, playing with his bowtie.

"So I've heard." Steve said, gently taking her hand.

"You are so, totally tight..." She cooed as she looked down at his body "You are, like, a real total package right?"

_Red Skull, Hydra, AIM, Crossbones... I don't care. I'll face them all just as long as you get me away from her, oh lord..." _Steve prayed.

"I try to keep in shape..." Steve said, trying not to sweat and hoping that was what she was really talking about.

"Take a walk, Kayla." A gruff voice came from behind the bar.

"Do I have to?" The blonde pouted as Steve turned to look at a miffed looking black haired guy who seemed vaguely familiar.

"Yes." There was no argument in his voice.

"Here's my number, Steve. You will call me, right?" She said with her best smile, looking him up and down like she wanted to eat him with her eyes.

"Absolutely." Steve lied.

"Maybe I'll see you later." She said suggestively.

"See you soon." Steve lied again.

Steve turned to the guy behind the bar, and surmised that this must be the Constrictor. He hadn't seen him in years, and he had been beaten beyond recognition that last time he saw him. He had to shake off the aftereffects of that awkward encounter and drive on with what he was here to do.

"It must be hard for you to walk around with your enormous balls." The Constrictor rasped under his breath. "What the hell are you DOING here?"

"I'm investigating..."

"Shut up! That was supposed to be a rhetorical question and an invitation to get the hell out of my bar! You are like a match in a dynamite shed and I'm not about to wait for someone to strike you if you catch my drift!"

"I need to ask you some questions, Frank." Steve insisted.

"Oh, by all means go ahead. If I don't answer are you gonna jump over the bar and start beating me up? That I'd love to see."

"If you think that I'm such a nuisance, why haven't you gotten a couple of bouncers to show me out?" Steve pressed.

"Because I don't run my joint that way. The Second Chance is my second chance. When I walked out of the hospital with a Scourge bullet in me I swore that I would do something to spit in his eye and let him know that he couldn't get us down. That's why I bought this bar and fixed it up. Everybody knows the rules. No costumes, no weapons, no grudges. This is just a place that we can all get together and forget who we are for a couple hours. Toast the memories of those of us that are no longer with us because of that sanctimonious bastard. Maybe remember what it was like to be a normal person you know what I mean?"

Actually, Steve knew perfectly what he was trying to say.

"But a guy like you has never strolled in. Maybe he has and we don't know it, but what we don't know don't hurt us. Everybody knows who you are, though, and I don't want to wait for them to find out."

"I promise you that I'm not here to cause trouble." Steve assured him.

"I know you don't want trouble, but I think that trouble's going to find you whether you want it or not. Who knows how many of my customers here have had their teeth kicked in by you and your Avenger pals. Just as soon as I saw you I put out the word that you were hands off, but you aren't helping me by hitting on their women. They're men too. They've got pride."

"I'm sorry." Steve said, meaning to have a long talk with Hawkeye when this fiasco was over with.

"Don't be sorry, be quiet." Constrictor said, thumping down a beer. "Here's a brewski. I owe you a lot more than that. You saved my sorry ass from the Scourge when nobody else could have given a shit. Most of us guys remember that you were the guy who took his ass down. They won't forget that out of all those so-called heroes you were the one who stood up for us. They know that you stand up for everybody, and that it isn't personal. Its just business, you know? Some of the newer guys, though, they don't remember what it was like back then."

"I understand." Steve said.

"You finish that beer. No hurry, and then you leave real quiet like." The Constrictor demanded. "I'll meet you in the parking lot and tell you whatever you want to know."

"Good enough."

"By the way... don't call that number if you know what's good for you." The former criminal said with fear in his voice.

Steve drank his beer slowly and thought about what Frank Schlichting had told him. He never gave much thought to what all the costumed creeps he tangled with did in their off duty hours. He gave it even less thought than what he did in his. They were all people too; some good, some bad, some very despicable, but there was no indication that any criminal activity was taking place here. It seemed like Hawkeye had taken him really far off course tonight. With a surreptitious glance over his shoulder he saw that she was still there, in a big group of friends. Inapproachable. Maybe that was a good thing.

In a split second decision, Steve got up from the bar and walked right past her table, going to sit at the corner booth with Clint. Frank didn't say where he had to finish his beer. As he approached he heard Hawk talking loudly to Scott Summers.

"So Reed's ashes aren't even cold before she's bumping uglies with Namor, and so when he comes back from the dead they just don't talk about it. They joke about it sometimes, but they both know that she was eating the tuna while he was dead if you catch my drift. You can't just light incense in the bedroom and pretend that it doesn't smell like fish. You shouldn't feel bad. It happens to the best of us. When Jean comes back she'll be mad, but she'll understand. You nailed her evil alien doppelganger and married her freakin' clone! She should know that she's the only one for you by now."

Steve stood there frozen in horror, not only by Hawkeye's words but the look of agreement on Scott's face. He was really buying it hook, line, and sinker.

"So you don't think it will matter that it is Emma..."

"Hey, Steve, sit down!" Clint insisted, causing Steve to numbly comply.

"I told you not to worry about that!" Hawkeye said in an exasperated tone of voice "I got hit hard on the rebound too! I had my own little blond Psychiatrist poking around in my brain trying to convince me that me and Bobbi shouldn't have been together in the first place. That we got married too soon and had nothing in common. You think that Emma is manipulative, she probably could have taken a class from Karla Soften! We got physical, you know, but all that did was make me realize how much I really missed Bobbi. There is no real right time to move on, and certainly no right person. You've just got to... you know... trust yourself and do your best to make the right choices."

"It isn't that simple at all." Scott lamented.

"Bobbi and me had a little rough patch." Clint said a little more somberly "The worst part of it was that we had just gotten back together when she..." He closed his eyes and took another drink of beer "It was because she was with another man while she was brainwashed, and she didn't want to tell me because she killed the guy after she got her mind back. She was furious that I was more angry that she killed the guy than about what the guy had done."

"I can... see the dilemma." Scott said.

"The point is that it was the secret that ruined everything. Our refusal to be honest with one another about what happened. We could have dealt with it together, but we let it tear us apart. You are a lucky man to be able to share your mind with your wife, so that doesn't have to ever be a problem when she comes back."

"You are making a lot of sense." Scott said quietly.

"You can't control what happened in the past, but from this day on you are the one in control of your actions. You just have to have faith that you and Jean are going to be together again. That you were meant to be together again. If not in this life... well, we both know that there are other worlds than these."

Steve could almost swear he saw a tear fighting to get out of Clint's eye, but he quickly swiped at his face and faked a sneeze.

"What do you think, Cap?" Summers said, looking to him with those blank red lenses.

Steve thought for a moment.

"I was in a chunk of ice for a very long time. Everybody thought that I was dead, but I wasn't. When I woke I found a world so much different than the one I left, with everyone I cared about gone. For the longest time I didn't want to become friends with anyone. For the longest time the thought of having a romance... well... it was unthinkable. Only time and acceptance of the things I could not change let me move forward with my life. Sometimes I don't think that I've moved forward enough. If you have a chance at happiness, it is up to you to know if it is what you really want or not. If you have that chance, and it is a genuine opportunity, I can't tell you not to take it."

He had a feeling on the back of his neck like she was watching him.

"I don't know." Scott said "You both make good points, but sometimes it just seems like there is no right answer for anything."

"Sometimes you just have to make the best decision you can and live with it." Steve said quietly.

They sat around and drank another round. They talked about the things that only men like them could understand. The burdens of leadership and the pressure to always do the right thing. The petty bickering within teams that were otherwise as tight as families, and the way that they had to always be the ones to break it up. How they didn't know what they would do with their lives if they did not have a common cause to fight for. Because each of them was born to fight, but never really knew it until they threw that fist punch, fired that first blast, or slung that first arrow. How sometimes it was very hard to be the good guy in a world that wanted its solutions to be fast and final.

"Captain... I just wanted to say that I've respected you for many years." Scott said.

"Why would you admire this senior citizen?" Hawkeye wisecracked.

"Because when you took in Pietro and Wanda as Avengers you stood up in front of the whole world and told them that they were just as good as you were. When the world saw Captain America stand up for mutants how could they argue with it? It made the real hard liners like Trask look like the lunatics that they were when they turned on you, and America would not follow them. With that one gesture you probably saved hundreds of thousands of mutant lives. You might have done more for our cause than all of the X-men put together. Don't think that we haven't appreciated it, even though over the years there have been times when we have been less than friendly. I've wanted to tell you for years, but there... just never seemed to be the right time."

Scott held out his hand.

"I just wanted to shake your hand. I watch the news and I see how much trouble they are giving all of you. If they discredit you, our chances of Human/Mutant equality will take a big hit. I don't think that they will, though. The people know what you really stand for. Logan once told you right to your face that he wouldn't follow you because you didn't have any powers. I think that maybe you might have the best power of all, and that is your integrity. Nobody can question that."

Captain America and Cyclops shook hands then, and seeing that his beer was empty Steve indicated to Clint that it was time to leave.

"I'll stay here for a little bit." Scott insisted, still ignorant to the nature of the place. Somehow Steve had the feeling that he could take care of himself, though.

"You stay strong and hang in there, buddy." Clint said as he stood up and tugged on his leather jacket.

"I will." Scott promised.

"Things will look a little better tomorrow, and every day after that." Steve promised as Clint walked away "Just try not to drink to much. Life can get... distorted at the bottom of a bottle."

"I understand." Scott insisted.

With that, Cap walked away. He had known Scott Summers since he was just a kid in a school uniform pretending to be a super hero. They had all been so young and brave then, and now they were trying their best to make sure that the next generation didn't have to go through what they did. It was a noble cause, and he wished him the best of luck with it. Sometimes it seemed, in the long view of years, that it was always the young that would bear the greatest burdens. Not the least of these were the expectations of their elders.

* * *

"I'm telling you that I don't know anything about the Syndicate." The Constrictor insisted.

Cap and Hawkeye had done just what he had said, waiting out in the parking lot for him. They had been rewarded when he showed up without any thugs or other disreputable types to back him up. It seemed like he was dealing in good faith. For that, Steve wasn't going to let Hawkeye lay a finger on him. He still insisted that he didn't know anything, but that could very well be the case.

"Are you sure?" Cap asked quietly, holding Hawkeye back with one arm when he stepped forward.

"I make it a point not to listen to my customers and insist that my employees do the same. Some of them I know will be too curious, so those ones I fit for earplugs. The customers ask if my waitress is deaf a lot, but when I tell them that she is they agree that it makes perfect sense." Frank shrugged.

"It sounds like a sound business policy." Cap allowed "But it doesn't do us any good."

"I'm sorry about that. I meant what I said about owing you one, but I could get in deep just for talking with you. You have to understand that. I promise that I'm not holding out on you."

"You should listen to the man." A voice insisted from above them.

All of their heads whipped up to see Hyperion and Power Princess circling above them, and a sparkle of light nearby gave away Dr Spectrum's presence as well.

"Aw, shit." Hawkeye cursed.

Sinister Syndicate members popped out from behind every car in the lot, it seemed. They were totally surrounded, including above. Cap could not imagine a worse situation if he tried.

"Hey, all of you! You know the rules! No costumes, no grudges! That includes the parking lot! All I gotta do is push a button and..." the Constrictor suddenly disappeared in a woosh of air as Speed Demon dragged him behind a nearby dumpster at super speed. The sound of the brutal beating he gave him sounded like a machine gun in an old John Wayne movie.

"So much for that." Hawkeye grumbled.

"What do you want?" Cap said without fear, looking directly at Hyperion.

"Oh, nothing too devious. Just to beat you within an inch of your life like you did to us. Maybe an inch past your life if you piss us off any more."

"Hello, Mimi! I love your look! Who does your hair?" Hawkeye mocked the young girl who had always before hid behind a freaked out punk rock look. She looked almost normal now, except for the jet black dye job and leotard with fishnet stockings.

"Shut up, you moron." Mimi growled "I'm not Screaming Mimi anymore. I'm Songbird."

"Oh yeah! How could I forget!" Hawkeye mocked her.

Steve thought that their best chance at survival was probably convincing the Syndicate that they had the wrong guys, but Hawkeye's mouth seemed to have already ruined that one. He saw the complete team here except for Golden Archer and that Hawk character.

"Where is the rest of the gang." Steve asked Hyperion.

"Black Eagle and Golden Archer are still recovering from the injuries that you inflicted on them!" Power Princess answered instead "Worry about your own injuries."

"If you just wanted to attack you would have already done it." Steve said reasonably.

"You know what? You are absolutely right." Hyperion laughed "Most of us are just here to watch our newest members get the pleasure."

Steve looked to the Amphibian and Songbird, both tensing and ready for battle.

"What do you say, Hawk?" Steve asked.

"I think that I haven't kicked any butt all week." Hawkeye said, cracking his knuckles.

That's when Songbird howled, blowing out the car window of every vehicle in the parking lot.

* * *

Everybody hit the ground like experienced troopers in a combat zone. The light fixtures had exploded and beer bottles had been bursting on the tables like miniature alcoholic bomb blasts. Everyone had their hands clutched over their ears except for select members of the wait staff, but a few of the more susceptible customers passed out from the force of the screech. It sounded like brake shoes with the pads worn out rubbing against a wheel made out of chalkboard amplified through a stadium sized set of concert speakers that were going though a feedback loop. Scott Summers was knocked as flat as everyone else, but somehow managed to stay conscious. He did not so much take shelter under the table as he fell under it, but as broken glass started falling from the ceiling that was a good thing. He had no idea how long he was under there with his ears ringing in the darkness, but suddenly strong hands grabbed him and pulled him out.

She whispered into his ear, but he could not make out what she was saying.

"I can't understand what you're saying." Scott said, still weak and confused.

"I said that you have to help him! You're their only chance!" She said much louder.

He couldn't see her face, but she didn't sound like she was a danger to him. She only sounded very concerned for somebody. He hadn't come for any trouble. He had only come to be alone and get drunk. He was halfway there already before the shriek killed his buzz. His self pity had only been interrupted by the brief interlude with Captain America and Hawkeye. He knew that they must be the ones that she was talking about. Everybody was starting to make for the door, but almost everybody that saw what was happening out there turned around and headed for the back. A few brave souls watched, almost transfixed by what they were seeing.

* * *

How had it all gone wrong so quickly?

Hyperion looked on with dismay at the circus that this simple task had become. The sonic scream of Songbird had knocked both heroes to the ground, seemingly stunned. When she and Amphibian had approached the one called Hawkeye, he sprung up to knock her silly with a savage uppercut and lock Amphibian into a choke hold. It had taken the Captain a few seconds more to recover, but once he did he rolled under a truck and disappeared from view. Amphibian had used his much superior strength to heave Hawkeye over an old Corvette with a hip toss, but Hyperion still couldn't understand why Hawkeye hadn't been effected by the scream. These non-powered humans should have been subdued already. His anger was boiling over that he would have to get involved in capturing these insects.

Hyperion and Power Princess hovered high above the conflict, and the Princess hoped for the sake of their newfound allies that they did not fail in this. She remembered the cruel blows that she had received from the one they called Captain America, and she hoped that they did not underestimate these men. She had said nothing, but looking on the Captain without he mask she was even more struck by how handsome he was. Hyperion insisted that they were mates on another world, and she had complied without enthusiasm, but nothing he had done had made her feel the way that she had while locked into battle with Captain America.

Speed Demon got done knocking out the mouthy bar owner. Damn he was a tough nut to crack. This old guy looked like a tall Danny DeVito but he had talked like a hard ass drill instructor and given him a hard fight despite his super speed. He could take a punch like Muhammad Ali and give one back like Sonny Liston. Speed Demon wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and spat a bloody wad of spit on his fallen foe. He looked back and was surprised to see neither of his foes still there, with only Songbird just beginning to pull herself off the ground. What the hell had happened while he was kicking this old guy's sorry ass?

Dr. Spectrum used his willpower to form a half-sphere of solid light around the parking lot. It took all of his self control not to vaporize the heroes just as soon as he saw them. He was embarrassed and livid about how he had been beaten by a cloud of bugs and wanted to kill anyone who reminded him of the embarrassment. He was afraid of Hyperion, though. Ever since he had gotten this stupid alien crystal he had the power to do anything he imagined. That was the problem. He had a very limited imagination, and he knew that he wasn't too smart. Hyperion always seemed to know what they had to do, and he was afraid that if he got him angry that he would turn on him. He might even throw him out of the group. That would be as bad as all that time he spent in prison, without his crystal, all over again.

"Come out, bowman!" Amphibian said as he sauntered around the edge of a minivan. He knew that he was many times stronger than a normal man, which Hawkeye was. Even though he was out of his element he knew that his enemy was without his weapons, and therefore helpless. Kingsley Rice had grown up in a much different world than his heroic counterpart of the Squadron's earth. Everyone had hated and feared him from birth. He had tried to take refuge below the waves, but even there humans would not leave him alone. Pollution, net fishing, whaling, and outright murder of his only companions made him return for his vengeance. It would be a pleasure to kill a human. A pleasure indeed.

That is when everything turned for the unexpected.

* * *

"I don't have a clear shot." Scott Summers insisted to the woman. "I don't know if that barrier would stop my blast or reflect it to hit the wrong person. I can't take that chance."

"We have to do something!" She said, seeming very upset.

A small crowd of the braver souls gathered on the other side of the door, peeking out to see what was going on. Scott wondered how the rest felt after running out the back only to find their cars inside an energy bubble. He was certain he had seen one or two of them fly off. Maybe it was his imagination. His head was still throbbing from the scream. Migraines like this had plagued him all of his life ever since the blow to his head that gave him brain damage; taking away his ability to hold back his eye blasts. They made his knees weak and made the world seem to be moving even when it wasn't. He prayed that he could stay conscious, for Cap and Hawkeye's sake.

"I'm not just going to stand here..." She tried to push her way past him, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her back behind the wall. It was harder than he thought it was going to be, and she didn't even seem to be struggling with all her might.

"We have to be smart about this. We need to wait for an opening, then take it for all its worth." He hoped so much that she would listen to him. He was the veteran of countless battles such as this, and the words of Captain America himself were ringing in his ears _You have to make the best decision you can, and live with it._

* * *

"There you are, Bowman." Amphibian said with a malicious grin as he flipped over the car Hawkeye had been hiding under "Are you tired of hiding like the worm you are?"

"Well, I've always thought that night crawlers made the best bait." Hawkeye said as he crossed his legs like a 1940's beach blanket model.

"What the..." were the last words that Amphibian said before he was knocked unconscious, the screams of warning from his companions coming a second too late.

Steve had rolled out from under a jacked up pickup, sprung to his feet, and leveled what was probably the hardest kick of his life all in a matter of seconds. His wing-tipped shoe had struck right at the area between the neck and the base of the skull. A kick like that would have killed a normal man, and even with Amphibian's mutant might his head still whipped back like a crash test dummy. He might wake up in the middle of next week. Steve fervently hoped that he had not brain damaged or paralyzed him, but this was a no-holds barred situation.

"You unscrupulous backstabber!" Hyperion howled, and his eyes began to glow, but Steve broke the mirror off of the dinged-up pick-up and held it up in front of his face just like he would his shield. By the time Hyperion realized what he was doing it was too late. He was hit in the eyes with his own atomic vision.

"ARRRRRGGGGG!" Hyperion howled, clutching at his eyes. "My eyes! Not again! I'll kill you! I'll rend you limb from bloody limb!"

Steve dropped the passenger side mirror from his hand, which felt like a baked flounder, and hissed with pain. He gave Hawkeye the signal and they took off in different directions. They both knew that their only hope was to divide the attention of their attackers. They had been toying with them by putting them against Songbird and Amphibian, but now it was going to be a real fight and they still didn't have their weapons.

"How did you know that would work, old timer!" Hawkeye shouted as he ran.

"I didn't!" Cap said honestly "It is just something I saw in a movie once!"

Hawkeye bumped right into Power Princess, who clutched his throat and lifted him off of the ground like a rag doll.

"Gak... Hi... cough... honey! No hug for Hawkeye?" He joked and choked at the same time.

"I'm going to squash you like a grape." she hissed as she began to squeeze.

Clink knew that she would pop his head off like a party favor if she squeezed just a little harder, and knew that there was only one thing that he could do. He had kept two or three trick arrowheads in the pocket of his leather jacket. All that he could hope was that he grabbed the right one. His fingers fumbled as his eyes rolled back in his skull and his face turned purple. He pulled it out and pressed the button, giving Power Princess a face full of tear gas.

Steve heard her scream all the way across the parking lot, even as he improbably dodged a punch from Speed Demon. He knew that the two of them had no chance of survival. Their only chance, and it was a slim one, was that that the bystanders in the bar would aid them. It was better than nothing, but there was no chance of it as long as they were in this bubble. He saw Dr Spectrum standing on top of a car looking left and right for him, and ran at him at top speed. The energy manipulating criminal turned around just in time to have his field of vision fill with the word "Thom McCann" before his world went black. For all the power of his energy crystal, Dr Spectrum was just a man. One kick from the super soldier put him down as decisively as it had Amphibian.

He hopped down from the car and saw the globe that surrounded the parking lot disappear into nothing. A whistling noise warned him of the approach of his adversary, but this time he wasn't fast enough to elude it. He was knocked from his feet by a supersonic clothesline from Speed Demon, yet somehow had the presence of mind to leg whip him like a dirty 49ers left tackle. Steve's head hit the cement and made the world burst like a white supernova. The Speedster hit a patch of broken glass like a sack of hammers and left a bloody streak on the pavement as he skid 30 yards into a row of motorcycles. Steve lay there, dazed and flat on his back. He knew that he had to move, but he was stunned. A shadow loomed over him for a second, and even before it descended he knew that it was too late. His eyes widened as the world exploded into pain.

Hyperion dropped a SUV on him, throwing it down with all of his superhuman might.

"CAP!!!" Hawkeye screamed "NO!!!"

As the dust settled around the crumpled Ford Explorer, screams and gasps came from the small crowd of onlookers. Hawkeye ran as fast as he could around and over cars until he came to the mess that used to be the SUV. A small pool of blood was beginning to form on the side closest to him, but that vision was quickly obscured by the tears that clouded his eyes.

"Cap..." Clint Barton cried.

**Next: The Experiment**

_Is this the end of Captain America? Can Hawkeye stand alone against the might of the Sinister Syndicate? Who is the mysterious woman in the Second Chance, and can she convince Cyclops to come to the aid of the beleaguered Avengers? Tune in next week, True Believer! _


	6. The Experiment

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Chapter Five: The Experiment**

Hawkeye's eyes were still stinging from the blast of tear gas that he had unleashed in the face of the huge Amazon that was throttling him, but that was not the only reason that tears were streaming down his face. Captain America had just been crushed under a sports utility vehicle right in front of his eyes like the wicked witch of the east. It didn't take more than a second for all of his life to flash before his eyes. One of the biggest parts of his life was a man who took a two-bit costumed crook named Hawkeye under his wing and constantly struggled to teach him what it meant to be a hero. Under the blue mask that man's name had been Steve Rogers, and if he was dead than it was not Hyperion who was to blame. When assigning blame, Clint Barton could look no farther than the mirror.

All that he wanted was for Cap to have a little bit of fun. Drink a few beers have some good conversation and maybe get laid. He always took himself so seriously, but he was still a young man on the outside. He had been stressing this Syndicate issue too much, and the media's political crap even more. Not only that, something was bothering him on a much deeper level and he was burying his problems in his work. He knew from experience that never worked. So it was with the best of intentions that Hawkeye had lured him here under the pretense of investigating. He never intended for this to happen, and could not have foreseen it even with his keen eyesight.

Even after the improbable attack by the Syndicate he had not given up hope. It was almost impossible to do that while Cap was beside you. When Songbird was about to scream he had turned off the hearing aids he had worn since his hearing was destroyed in a battle with Crossfire. This allowed him to fake being affected by her scream and sucker punch her when she got too close. After that is was a simple plan, and they didn't even have to speak to know what it was. Get to the beetle and get their weapons. That had been the point in scrambling around and under the maze of cars through blankets of broken glass. When they had KOed Amphibian and Steve blinded Hyperion he dared to hope that they could actually beat these guys. He had almost gotten to the beetle when Power Princess grabbed him, but now that was forgotten. His hope had just came crashing down with the weight of a Ford Explorer.

There was no hope, only rage.

He ran at full speed for the stand of bikes where a groggy Speed Demon was just getting up and tackled him right at the waist. He flipped him over and came down on him with a rabbit punch that had all his strength and weight behind it. Constant pulling of his 250 lb bow had given him phenomenal upper body strength, and Speed Demon got all of it. He was rewarded with the sound of the criminal's jaw breaking like fine china. His keen eyes whipped around the parking lot, looking for another one. Power princess was still groping around in a cloud of tear gas trying to find her way out, Dr Spectrum was down, and Speed Demon here was done. If Amphibian was conscious it was a medical miracle and Songbird was nothing he had to worry about. That left Hyperion.

"So much for your friend Bowman." Hyperion laughed like a maniac when Hawkeye ran at him, rage turning the corners of his vision blood red.

"You murdering bastard!" Clint yelled, arming another of his arrowheads and throwing it like a grenade.

Hyperion caught it and squeezed. The explosive charge erupted loudly but the flames spurted ineffectively between the Superhuman's indestructible fingers.

"Is that the best you can do, you pathetic little man?" Hyperion cackled.

As if on cue, Hyperion's world turned red as an unbelievable force hit him. It was as it he had been hit by a freight train made out of depleted uranium traveling at 800 miles per hour. He crashed through three of the vehicles in the parking lot before tearing a furrow through the concrete of the highway and coming to rest in a stand of trees 1000 yards away. The tree that stopped his momentum fell on him with a tremendous crash. He had no idea what had just happened, but he knew that he didn't like it. Hyperion was a man of nearly godly might, and was not used to humiliation. It took most of his strengh to throw the tree off of him, and he was slow getting up. The image of Steve Rogers holding a mirror was still burned onto his retinas, a floating apparition in purple and yellow wherever he looked. He was not what you'd call a happy camper. He was dazed, and could not force himself to get up.

* * *

"Got him." Cyclops said with the same professional tone of voice he had used when he told her that they had to wait for the right opportunity. He put his ruby quartz ray bands back on and opened his eyes. He could not control the destructive force that burst from his eyes, and wished that he had brought the visor that regulated the force of his blasts. When he had seen what Hyperion had done, he did what he was always afraid to do to any living being. He had ripped off his goggles and opened his eyes as wide as he could. Such an uncontrolled blast could eventually pulverize adamantium into dust.

She ran as fast as she could toward the wreckage, mute and sobbing with horror. She had seen the entire thing, and felt like her heart was going to stop any minute. All that she could think was that she needed to get it off of him. She could see his head and shoulders but his body was totally pinned under a ton of twisted metal. There was no way that he could have survived, but that didn't matter. He had to get him out. She grabbed with both hand and heaved with all her might, and it lifted some of the pressure off of him, but she was not strong enough to roll it off of him.

"Help me!" She screamed out to no one in particular, rage and pain evident in her voice.

Hawkeye ran to her side and began to heave too. It lifted off of him even more, and she smiled as she heard Steve groan. He was still alive. That was all that mattered. A patron ran out of the bar, and then another, and somehow between them they were strong enough to roll the SUV off of the pinned super soldier. Then they saw the blood. Both of his legs were messy compound fractures, and it looked like one of the bones had nicked his femoral artery because he was bleeding like water through a sieve. The blood pooled around him like a bright red cloak.

"Somebody call 911!" Scott Summers howled at the top of his lungs, with all of the certainty of command he had gained over years as the X-men's field general.

"I'm so sorry, Clint." Hawkeye heard from behind him, turning to see Songbird in tears. "I tried to stop it with my voice construct, but it punched right through."

"You probably saved his life, Melissa." Hawkeye said, tying a tourniquet around the leg with the messy wound. He knew that was true. If it hadn't been for the force field that she had thrown around Cap at the last second he would have been flatter than a pizza. He thanked God that the Syndicate had been stupid enough to kidnap and recruit one of his Thunderbolts from where she had been pulling an undercover operation. The majority of the world still believed that Melissa and the other Thunderbolts were villains, and they had enough run-ins with the forces of law and order to confirm that. He had never doubted that she was going to turn on them, and couldn't have planned it better. That is why he had pulled his punch when he socked her. She had taken it like a pro, too. That time she spent as a bad-guy wrestler in the UCWF had not gone to waste.

"The cops are already on their way!" A battered Constrictor yelled, staggering out from behind the dumpster where he had been brutally beaten "All of you, don't panic! Just pull out your insurance information and smile really big! Any of you got outstanding warrants? I got a place you can hide in the basement!"

The patrons of the bar were flocking to Constrictor's side. Hawkeye had a feeling that if the guy had it together like this when he was a super villain he never would have had to retire. Maybe taking that bullet really was a life changing experience for him after all. As the sirens sounded in the background he found himself looking at the woman who was holding Steve's bloody body so close to hers and sobbing. She had strawberry blonde hair that looked like a bad dye job and seemed vaguely familiar. He turned his attention to Melissa instead.

Songbird was sobbing just as much, stunned by the amount of blood that was seeping out of Steve. Part of putting on these costumes and living this crazy life was convincing yourself that nobody would ever get seriously hurt. She had fought Captain America when she was a Super Villain, and by his side as a hero. He had never seemed anything but invincible. Now he looked like road kill, and she could feel that sense of mortality that she had been running from all of her life. Captain America was a pinnacle of strength, and seeing him dressed in street clothes and soaked in blood made her realize that all the strength that she was clinging to was an illusion. In the end, if you played the game you paid the price. No exceptions.

"Summers!" Hawkeye yelled at Cyclops, unconcerned with who was listening. "Help me round up these scumbags! I'm gonna make them pay in spades!"

"Its going to be ok." The woman almost whispered to Steve, her tears falling on his cheek as she held his head in her lap "You can't die. Not now. Not like this."

Steve was unconscious, but she could feel his breath against her skin. As long as she could feel that, everything would be all right.

* * *

Hyperion groaned as he forced himself to his feet, and with a thought flew up to the height of 20 feet in the air. What he saw made his inhuman blood boil. All of the other members of the Syndicate were rounded up and tied down except for Power Princess, who was surrounded by three figures who were engaging her with ranged attacks. The accursed bowman had found his bow and it seemed as if Songbird had turned on them. Power Princess was like a lioness surrounded by hyenas, and in a split second he was there by her side. He spun to face her attackers, growling with anger. He swatted away an arrow shot by Hawkeye and it blew up a nearby car, but he didn't even flinch. A solid sound construct wrapped around Power Princess but he shattered it with a blow from one invulnerable fist.

"Insects! You won't touch a hair on her head while I live! I'll crush you into paste ! I'll..."

Hyperion was almost embedded in the side of a van as Cyclops blasted him, but this time he had braced himself on the ground instead of flying in the air. He pulled himself free from the van and stormed toward the mutant.

"Pretty eyes you have there, sweetie." Hyperion sneered, his eyes glowing. "You want to see mine?"

"Why don't we do that." Cyclops said, grabbing the arm of his wrap-around shades "Let's just see who blinks first."

Hyperion thought about it for a moment, but his superior hearing already heard the sirens that they would not hear for a few minutes. He was not even slightly afraid of the authorities, but just one cowardly officer with a radio could bring the Avengers or the Fantastic Four in less time than it would take to crush these insects. Hyperion was not a stupid man, although he had come over time to rely too much on the superhuman might that made him among the most dangerous beings on the planet. He could see that Songbird had turned on him, and that the Syndicate members he left behind were compromised by her betrayal. He knew that he had only one smart play to make.

"We'll dance another day, mutant. Make no mistake about that." Hyperion snarled, grabbing Power Princess around her waist and flying away at supersonic speed.

* * *

Hawkeye looked down at Captain America's blood on his hands.

He had done everything that he could. Everything that he knew of first aid he did in the minutes between Hyperion flying off and the arrival of the sirens. Cap had started to go into shock, his lips turning as blue as a fish's back and his hands cold to the touch. When the paramedics arrived all that he could do was get out of their way. He stood nearby and tried to straighten things out with the police. It was his responsibility, because he was the one with the Avengers ID. Cyclops had melted into the crowd, hoping to avoid any legal entanglements, and Songbird was almost arrested on the spot before Clint intervened. He insisted that they let her remain in Avenger custody until everything could be straightened out. She still had not stopped crying, and probably would not have put up a fight even if they had arrested her.

The Syndicate members were booked by officers of Code Blue, who had been alerted by the button in the Constrictor's pocket. It seemed that he had an "understanding" with the officers that enabled him to run his business without molestation just as long as things didn't get out of hand and that he informed them when it did. They didn't pay the least bit of attention to the other patrons of the bar, asking them no questions and thus expecting no lies. They knew that they had bigger fish to fry getting these super creeps in the tank and a super soldier escorted to the hospital. Three police cars escorted the ambulance as it screamed along the road to the nearest hospital in Albany. After he was stabilized they were already planning an airlift to a state of the art facility. This was no ordinary patient they had here. It was the Living Legend of World War Two.

Hawkeye drove behind the ambulance in his beetle. The vehicle had miraculously survived the battle and he was glad that he had it customized with bulletproof glass. Otherwise Melissa's shriek would have made this a much less comfortable ride. That is if such a thing were possible. They drove in total silence. An Avenger, a X-man, a super villain, and a complete stranger. It sounded almost like the beginning of a joke. All they had to do is walk into a bar, but then again they had done that earlier. If this was a joke, it certainly wasn't a funny one. Hawkeye still didn't know why Cyclops had insisted that this woman come along, but he had not been in the mood to argue.

"It's all my fault, Hawkeye." Melissa sobbed from the passenger side seat, breaking the silence "I'm the one that gave them the idea to let me follow you. I just wanted to contact you and let you know that I hadn't turned on you, and I thought that they would let me do it alone, but they followed me."

"You did great, kid, and don't let anybody tell you anything different." Hawkeye said. "You helped capture three members of the Syndicate, which even the combined Avengers couldn't do. You probably saved Cap's life."

"None of it would have happened if it wasn't for me. I should have been more patient, but I was so scared. I thought every day that they would find out that I was a Thunderbolt and kill me. If they had decided to, I couldn't have stopped them. I didn't know what else to do."

"Don't worry." Cyclops piped in from the back seat. "Mistakes get made all the time, and what really matters is how we respond to the results. Captain America is going to be just fine. If there is anyone who knows the risks of being a crime fighter it is that man."

"I wouldn't count Cap out of any fight." Hawkeye said, stealing a soft look at Songbird as he drove "I'm not going to count him out of this one either."

He kept his eyes on the rearview mirror, though. This woman seemed to be in shock caused by grief, but she had yet to identify herself. Why was she so damn familiar? What was Cap to her? Why had she come to their aid when the rest of the bar was hiding like the rats they were?

* * *

"Mission..." Steve Rogers muttered.

"Did he just say something!" The paramedic yelled.

"I think I heard him." the nurse said she continued to push him into the ER. Doctors and PAs were screaming everywhere. Everybody wanted to treat Captain America.

"Is it really him?"

"Let me see."

"Back off! Can't you see that we have a patient here!"

"I've got this!"

"Get him stabilized and in the OR STAT! I want a full Ortho consult on the double!"

"Call Doctor Bannister!"

"Do you think he's going to live?"

"He can't die, he's Captain America!"

"He's just another patient! We've got to do our job!"

* * *

It was the longest two hours of Hawkeye's life. He didn't feel comfortable sitting down so he stood for most of the time, looking out the window. He saw the trees and grass of upstate New York, wondering how this could be so close to the metropolis that Manhattan island had become. They hadn't let him in to see Cap, and he couldn't argue with him. He was hot-blooded, but time and age had given him enough sense to know when he couldn't do anything. Melissa had fallen asleep and Cyclops had left in a hurry, insisting that he knew someone who could help. Hawkeye would take all the help he could get. That left him alone with the woman who had come along with them.

He had found himself wishing that she would just take off, but two hours ago seemed to be the time to deal with her.

"Who are you?" Hawkeye had said bluntly after Cyclops left "Who is Cap to you?"

"My name is Rachel." The woman said "Steve and I are close."

"Rachel Leighton?" Clint asked.

"Yes." She admitted.

"Diamondback. Well, that explains what you were doing at the bar at least."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Rachel snapped at him, not in the mood to take any crap from the Avenging Archer.

"I call it like I see it." Hawkeye said with a lopsided smirk. "I never really got to rap with Cap when he got involved with you, but there were a lot of people that didn't like it."

"Are you telling me that an ex-con can't change? I hope that YOU aren't trying to say that."

"Me? Hell no. I'm living proof that isn't true, but then again I didn't murder the Porcupine."

"That was an accident!"

"No, when I put an arrow in the barrel of Egghead's gun and he was stupid enough to pull the trigger that was an accident. When you pelted the porcupine with acid and explosives and stabbed him in the heart that was murder."

"He FELL on that quill! I can't believe that I'm having this argument with you at a time like this! You self righteous bastard!" She was incensed. She had never had any reason to like Hawkeye but now was convinced that she hated him.

"What's Cap to you anyway? You left him how long ago?"

"He is everything to me! He is the only good thing that ever happened to me."

"He is the best thing to happen to a lot of people, but that is because he works really hard at it. Do you think that you're special? Hah! Cap may be a boy scout but he's not exactly a monk."

"You sanctimonious prick! Why don't you just get bent!" Rachel was so mad that her Texas accent was coming back. "What the hell do you know anyway?"

"Lets just say that I know a thing or two about falling for the wrong women. Sometimes, when somebody gets lost, it is best that they stay lost." Hawkeye said without a trace of good humor.

"I'm not going anywhere..." Rachel insisted.

"I've got an Avengers ID in my pocket that says that I can get you escorted out of here." Clint fired back.

"Well, I've got a blood type and some super soldier serum in my veins that says I'm not going anywhere! If he needs an emergency blood transfusion where do you think they are going to get it? I've got Steve's blood in my veins!"

That had stopped the argument very quickly. Hawkeye had called the doctor and found out that an emergency blood transfusion was needed. Rachel had given twice in the last two hours, now he was just waiting. The doctor had come out of the OR with all sorts of bad news. Internal bleeding. Ruptured spleen. Broken ribs. Fractures in both legs. Cracked pelvic bone. Lost a lot of blood. Still hadn't regained consciousness. Serum resisting anesthesia. A specialist needed. There wasn't anything that he could do. Sometimes, that was the hardest thing a man could accept. He wondered if he should apologize to Diamondback for the things that he had said.

Yeah, right.

Rachel Leighton felt weak in the knees, and it wasn't just because she had given blood. She didn't know what she was doing here any more than Hawkeye did, but she wasn't going to admit that to Hawkeye. She and Steve had parted as friends, but it seemed like that only worked as long as they never saw each other again. She had tried so hard to ignore every story about him on the news and never look when he came on TV. It had been especially hard the last few months when it seemed like everybody was talking about him. Twice she had driven all the way to Avengers mansion. Twice she had gotten out of the car and looked down that long drive. Twice she had gotten back in the car and hit her head against the steering wheel. How could she be so stupid as to think that Captain America would want anything to do with her? She had never brought him anything but trouble. As much as they cared for each other, it was obvious that it wasn't meant to be.

So she had gone back to her friends, and they had taken her in gladly. There was always money to be made somewhere by those who knew how to do it. Ever since Sept 11th the money was to be made in mercenary work. Even criminals had been affected by the events of those days, and it fell to her and people like her to make those responsible pay for it. She hadn't always succeeded, but one perp here and one perp there made all the difference. The only difference between what she did and what someone like the Black Widow did was that she was being paid by the private sector. She had learned a lot from Cap, and she had turned what she had learned into good money. She thought that would make her happy, but she had been wrong.

Diamonds weren't a girl's best friend, and they certainly wern't forever.

She didn't even know how wrong she had been until she had looked up and saw him at that bar. She had almost choked on her drink. It had been a normal everyday girl's night out with Asp and Black Mamba, but neither of them had recognized him. He just looked like a hundred other blond guys to them, because they had never kissed those lips or looked deeply into those eyes. She had tried to appear normal, but under the table her legs were shaking. Especially when he walked right by her. She had been too nervous to say anything or to even get up. Why didn't he say something? She couldn't help but think that things would have been different if they would have just talked. When she saw him pinned under the truck she was almost hysterical, and then had fallen into a state of shock that hadn't lifted until Hawkeye dragged her out of it with his asshole comments. She supposed that she should thank him for that.

Yeah, right.

"We're preparing a helicopter to take him to Manhattan." Dr. McCall informed them.

* * *

How did this become such a circus?

First Thor had shown up. Then the Vision and the Scarlet Witch. After that it became a convention. Falcon showed up in civilian clothes with the Black Widow. Hank Pym arrived with Ant-man. Janet van Dyne arrived with Tony Stark dressed for a cocktail party. Then the entire Fantastic Four showed up. The Defenders were represented by Nighthawk, Hellcat, Sub Mariner, Dr Strange and Valkyrie. Even some of the Heroes for Hire showed up. Who next? Moon Knight? Ultra Man? Where the hell was D-man anyway? Everybody was biting their nails and the situation was not improved by their presence. One thing was for sure, though. This might be the safest hospital on the planet.

It was totally understandable. Whenever one of their own went down the heroes rallied around them. It seemed to happen far too often that villains would take such moments of weakness to strike. Once when Warren Worthington was hospitalized the Marauders attempted to murder the Angel in the ICU. To their misfortune they discovered that his physician was Thor, who killed Blockbuster with one cruel blow. Still, the villains had not gotten a clue. Thus, at times like this such a gathering of heroes was necessary. They all had their own agendas, but at times lie this they stuck together. Cap was listed in critical condition, and they all knew what that meant.

"Cap... I can't believe it." Johnny Storm shook his head as he looked toward the double doors that they had taken Cap through.

"He can't go out like this." Falcon said "He just can't."

Rachel listened to them all and tried her best not to cry again. They all loved him so much. She had been listening to all of them talk about him for an hour. It was nearly 3 in the morning and none of them were going anywhere. She wondered if Steve knew how lucky he was to have friends like this. She wondered if anyone would ever care for her as much as this circle of heroes cared for Captain America. Some of them were talking about him like he was already dead, laughing about how he kept using 1940's jargon after he was first thawed out. Calling everybody "Jack" and "Buster" and otherwise talking like somebody out of a Jimmy Cagney movie. About how mere minutes after waking up from a decades long sleep he beat the pants off of all the Avengers put together, took the team over, and never looked back. He had literally been handing people their asses ever since.

His shield was laying on the waiting room table. Everyone had gathered around it. She wished so much that they would put it away.

"It is good to see you again." The Black Widow told her.

"It wasn't good to see you the last time." Rachel responded.

"Ha! I knew that there was a reason that I liked you."

"You do? I never noticed."

"I was always suspicious, and probably not very supportive, but I am glad that you are back in Steve's life... if indeed you are." She said slyly.

_You stupid bitch! You only wanted Steve for yourself like you've gotten half the guys in this room! _Rachel's thoughts screamed. She hoped that no telepaths were planning to visit _You're just feeling me out to get my intentions you manipulative..._

Luckily a red headed guy with shades on pulled Natasha to the side with a whisper in her ear. It was only after she excused herself that Rachel berated herself for being such a selfish and jealous person. Looking over at She-Hulk, with her perfect body and towering height, she remembered how jealous she was toward all of them. All of the ones that got to spend any time at all with Steve. Inside her was a big green monster than made She-Hulk look like nothing.

"Ms Leighton?"

The voice from behind her made her jump, and she turned around to see a little doctor with coke-bottle glasses.

"Yes?"

"Come with me, please." He said, walking toward the double doors.

They all looked at her, and she bit her lip as she looked back at them. Only Reed Richards had been let in because they needed his expert opinion on Cap's resistance to painkilling medication. Why had they called on her? Did they need more blood? Were things that dire?

"Come on." The doctor insisted.

* * *

It was all a mistake.

The doctor thought that she was a blood relative because she kept giving transfusions. That is why she had been brought in. They told her what they were too afraid to tell anyone else. They told her that Captain America was dying. That they had done all that they could, and now it was up to him whether or not he got through the night. They did not think that he would. They wanted someone by his side to comfort him in case he woke up, because every moment of consciousness could be his last. They said that they could not believe that he was still alive, and that a man with less of a constitution would be long dead. Quiet tears dripped from her chin as she held his hand, sitting by his bed in the dim light. She had not been to church in years, maybe since she started being a criminal. Even so, she had been silently praying the whole time.

"Steve..." She said quietly, the first words she had uttered. "Steve... you need to wake up."

"Bernie?" He said.

Rachel almost jumped, he was obviously not fully conscious, but it was better than nothing.

"Steve! I'm so glad you are awake... its..."

"I need to tell you, Bernie..." Steve almost mumbled.

"What? What do you need to tell me?" Rachel asked.

"Memories... so many..." Steve gasped for moment "So much pain."

"You can tell me, Steve, just keep talking."

"Sara... I was so happy that summer..." Steve began.

* * *

The summer of 1938 was the happiest time of Steve's life. On the surface, things might not have seemed so wonderful. He had a broken leg that was very slow to heal and needed to take summertime classes to make up for the work that he had missed while he was in the hospital. By the end of June, though, the summer was his. His and Sara's. After that first, awkward date when the went to see the new movie "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves" they had been inseparable. She came over every day and forced him to get out of the house. Even though he was embarrassed to let others see him crutching around the block he enjoyed those walks and what they talked about more than anything he could remember. It was like living your entire life seeing things in black and white, like the beginning of the "Wizard of Oz," and suddenly everything is in Technicolor.

Steve couldn't help out Sara's dad anymore, and soon found out that Mr. Pulaski had found another boy. He was disappointed, but he recovered more quickly than he imagined. Sara had taken the drawings he did in the hospital to a couple of her father's friends and they had seen potential. They visited him in the hospital and asked if he wanted a job in their bullpen embellishing their prints so that they could make deadline. That was how Steve got his summer job with Jack and Joe, and had the time of his life helping them illustrate the pulps. The cheap little magazines had popped up following the adventures of those Human Torch and Sub Mariner characters that had burst onto the scene the last few years. Steve had seen them both flying through the air on their way to a crime scene or a battle with evil. Some said that the Sub Mariner was a bad guy, but nobody could prove it. Sometimes he helped out the city, sometimes he didn't, and there was no rhyme or reason to it. Joe and Jack didn't like doing that book, because the sales were like a Coney Island roller coaster.

That August he kissed Sara for the first time on a rooftop during a flood that the Sub Mariner caused. Everybody was crowded on the rooftops watching the tidal waves wash by only floors beneath them, feeling the huge bulk of the building beginning to sway. Without even thinking he grabbed her around her waist and pulled her tight. It was a moment of absolute fear and terror when they thought that the building was going to tumble into the waves, and their young lips locked together like they had done it a hundred times, clutching desperately at each other as if that alone could save them. They were like that for a very long time, even after the waves had gone and the crowd thinned out. Standing there holding each other as if that was the only thing that mattered.

As happy as that summer was, it had to end.

By November 1938 Steve was miserable. Not only had he and Sara gone back to different schools but his summer job with Jack and Joe dried up after their studio was destroyed by the flood. He could only meet with Sara on the weekends because their junior year in high school was killing them with schoolwork. These were the days before endless telephone conversations, so on these weekend dates they needed to cram a weeks worth of love into one or two days. He was broke, he still walked with a limp, and his Halloween date with Sara had been ruined because the radio station had convinced the entire city that it was being attacked by aliens. They had spent the whole night looking for a basement to hide in because they were convinced that the alien nerve gas couldn't get underground. Orson Wells hadn't even sounded sorry when he apologized for the broadcast, but rather puffed up with his self importance. Steve had felt like an idiot for not remembering the plot from "War of the Worlds" because he had read that book in the hospital.

President Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving. Nobody really knew why but everybody was grumbling something about shopping. The point was that Thanksgiving was not to be observed for another two weeks and Steve wished that it would get here, because the Navy had promised to give Frank Thanksgiving leave and he had promised to come. He had missed his brother so much over the years and despaired of ever seeing him again. He had been watching the newsreels, and things were getting even more desperate. There had seemed to be hope when they appeased Hitler in Munich, but one month later Czechoslovakia was under the heel of Nazi tyranny. When Steve and Sara had seen the footage of Germany's _Krystallnacht_ before some forgettable melodrama she had run crying from the theater.

Some jerk behind her had yelled "That's how we outta handle Jews!"

When he had caught up with Sara she was inconsolable, and wouldn't go back in the theater. As he had walked her back to her family's apartment she was quieter than normal. Steve could almost feel the misery surrounding her and he wished that there was something that he could say. He knew that his family did not approve of his seeing a Jewish girl, and that when he had invited her over for Easter dinner it had been awkward and embarrassing to everybody involved. He didn't care, though. He was young and it didn't matter to him. It didn't really matter to his father, who looked at it with his typical aloof indifference. His mother, though, seemed very vexed by it. Over the years she had seemed to get more and more involved with the church, which was a good thing, but as she did it seemed she was less tolerant of those that didn't go. Steve went as a matter of course, but his father would not be caught dead there.

It was that night that she broke his heart.

"Steve... I don't think that we can see each other any more." She said as they arrived at the door.

"What?" Steve almost yelled, totally shocked.

"It's just... its too hard and we're too different."

"What.. Why... is there somebody else?"

"No no no no no!" She insisted "You don't understand, its not that."

"Then what is it? I'm not good enough?"

"No... I..."

"That's it, isn't it? You took pity on the little weakling in the hospital and now its getting old."

"You don't understand..."

"Of course I don't understand!"

"Steve, you are so wonderful..."

"If I was so wonderful you wouldn't be breaking it off! I'll make it easy for you! Have a nice life!" Steve yelled as he stormed off.

"Steve, please listen..."

But he didn't listen to her. He didn't want to talk to her, and he didn't want to talk at all. He walked away from her that night and he didn't look back. He was hurt, humiliated, and most of all horrified at the way that he had acted. She must think that he was so pitiful, but he wasn't going to go back to beg. It was all that he wanted to do, but he wasn't going to do that. He would never do that. The worst thing about the things he had said was that he had sounded just like his father.

Steve did not go home that night, and he didn't care that his parents would be worried. He wandered through the park at night, which even then was not safe. He didn't know what he was looking for, but he felt like he was going to freeze to death. He just kept walking, hoping that his limp would go away. He paid for the late late showing at the movie theater just to thaw out for a bit, and then continued his walking. It just seemed to go on over and over in his head. The images from the newsreels and how much injustice there was in the world. How could there be any justice in the world when people like the Pulaski's had to be afraid? He saw what Hitler was doing from here on the other side of the world, but to the Pulaski's who had family still in Poland, it didn't seem so far away at all.

"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Steve said out loud, his breath turning to steam in the cold air.

"What was that, son?" A old man asked as he walked by.

"Nothing, sir. Have a good night." Steve said as he kept walking. He noticed that the sun was starting to come up.

That is when he saw the poster. An old man with a white goatee and a star spangled hat pointing right at him. "I want YOU for the US Army." The slogan leaped out at him. Right next to the slogan was a man in an army uniform struggling with a key in a rusty lock.

"Sir... excuse me... what is this place?"

"Don't you know, son? It is the induction center." The soldier said, not looking back at him.

"Induction?"

"Where you sign up for the army. Are you interested son? To tell you the truth I don't get many fish at this time of the morning."

"Fish?"

"Why don't you come in and have a cup of coffee, son. You look cold."

"Yes sir."

That got the man to turn to him with a smile. "You sound like a soldier already. Don't call me sir, though, cause I work for a living. Just call me Sergeant."

He finally got the door open.

"Come on in."

Steve followed him into the cold room as he pulled the cord on an overhead lamp. It kind of looked like those rooms where they interrogated criminals in the movies.

"Have you ever given any thought of joining up?" The Sergeant said "I've been in for 20 years, so now I'm not good for anything but desk work, but in my prime I traveled all over the world. I got to live in Europe, Asia, and the pacific islands. I've been all over this country too. Anyplace you can mention I've probably seen it."

"Were you in the war?" Steve asked.

"Yep. Not the best time of my life, to be sure, but it was good when it was over. There was a hell of a party in Paris for us before we left."

"My father was in the war." Steve admitted.

"Somehow I thought so. He was an officer, wasn't he?"

"How did you know?"

"You are too polite not to be an officer's son." He said in a tone of voice that almost made it sound like a backhanded compliment. "You in school?"

"Yes Sergeant."

"Do you want to go to college?"

Steve was silent for a moment.

"Son?"

"I want to fight, Sergeant." Steve finally said.

Sergeant Alan Gaston was shocked by what he heard, but tried not to show it. He had been working in this office for two years and he was used to rowdy street toughs swaggering in and saying something like that. It was all false bravado, he knew, and he had seen how tough those guys really were once they got to the battlefield. A great many of them never even made it because they were broken down in training and ended up on stateside work details or in fort Leavenworth making big rocks into small rocks. This polite and reserved kid that he could probably knock over with a feather had said it with more resolve than he had ever heard, and when he looked in his clear blue eyes there was no doubt at all.

"You want to fight, huh?" The sergeant said as he leaned back.

"I can't stand by anymore. Not like everybody else is doing. I can't watch anymore while people are terrorized and freedom is trampled. We're going to face Hitler sooner or later. I want to be there when we do."

"I'm going to be honest with you, kid. You sound a lot tougher than you look. Soldiering isn't for everybody, and if it wasn't so early I'd probably tell you to get lost and talk to somebody who might have a chance of being a real soldier. A kid like you... well... even if they let you in they won't give you a rifle. They're going to make you a cook, maybe a clerk if you can learn how to type. You might end up the guy in the QM washing dirty bed linins. This is if you are lucky, you know."

"That doesn't matter to me. I want to do my part, whatever that is. If they won't let me fight at least I'll be helping the guys who do."

Sergeant Gaston knew soldiers. He had been around them all of his life. His father had been a career Sergeant just like he had ended up being. He had no family of his own because through two decades of service he had an entire barracks full of kids to take care of. He had heard them whine and complain about the slightest things and constantly had to adjust their attitudes. He had dealt with the loud ones and quiet ones, the big and the small. He would have liked to think that he had seen every soldier that ever walked or crawled. He immediately wished that he could pull this kid's soul out of his body and put him in a bigger model, because he was every inch a soldier.

"I'll tell you what, kid." Sergeant Gaston said, a smile on his face "We'll give it a shot. The worst they can do is say no."

* * *

"No." Doctor Willemsly said as he stamped hard on the paper with his rubber stamp.

"But..."

"4-F. Unfit for service." The doctor said without pity. "Next!"

The rage boiled under Steve's calm surface. He had not slept since the night before, and had spent most of the day at the induction center. This doctor that rejected him out of hand had drawn his blood, made him perform a variety of painful flexibility tests, shined light in his eyes, gave him a vision test, thrust a tongue depressor down his throat and stuck his finger up his anus. Now he said "4-F" because he was too "frail" as he put it. Steve tried to accept it, tried not to take it personally, tried just to leave quietly, but failed miserably.

"Who are you?" Steve said in a low voice.

"Excuse me, son?"

"Who are you to tell me that I can't?"

"Well..."

"WHO ARE YOU TO TELL ME THAT I'M NOT FIT TO SERVE MY COUNTRY?!" Steve bellowed, surprising everyone that such a strong, strident voice could erupt out of such a tiny young man.

"I'm... a doctor.. . I..."

"You can look at my height and laugh. I'm only 5'6 and 90 pounds. You can look at my blood and tell that I'm anemic. You can look at my limp and think that is all there is to me, but you are wrong!" Steve yelled "You can listen to my heart with that stethoscope, but obviously you aren't listening hard enough, because you have no idea how far a man's heart can take him! I'm not a draftee! I'm a volunteer! I'm here to fight and who are you to tell me that I'm not good enough!"

By then a burly Sergeant had come and grabbed his arm, wanting to say something about how he was speaking to an officer. One look into his furious eyes made him realize that he cared even less about that then he cared about the Sergeant grabbing his arm. The little inductee pulled his arm away with surprising ease and stormed away. His clothes were waiting in a little room for him, and as he passed inductees and soldiers alike got out of his way. Steve could not remember a day when he had been more disappointed. He had tried his best, putting on his best face and even lying about his age, but they had seen through it to the worthless worm that he really was. How could he even go home and face his father?

"Let me see that file, doctor."

Dr. Willemsly turned around to see an unexpected sight. Brigadier General Phillips took the file from his unresisting hand. Everyone had been so distracted by the boy that nobody even called the room to attention when he entered. The General flipped through the paperwork without comment, just scratching his chin. The doctor didn't know what to say to him.

"Perfect." was all the General said.

* * *

It was a miserable walk home for Steve. It was the last place in the world that he wanted to go. The Army had been his last chance to get away from this. It wasn't real right now. He could play a trick on his mind and tell himself that it wasn't really happening and if he left like Frank had it would all be all right. Once he walked through that door it would be real again. He touched the doorknob and sighed, but before he could turn it the knob was yanked out of his hand.

"Steven Grant Rogers!" His mother almost bellowed, tears in her eyes "Where in God's name have you been!"

"I..." Steve didn't know how to explain, but he didn't get a chance before his mother folded him in her arms so tightly.

"I was so worried." She sniffled "I thought that I was going to lose you too. If I lost you I would have lost everything."

"How's..."

"The same... always the same..." His mother sniffled.

"I tried to join the Army, mom." Steve finally choked out.

She pushed him back with a look of horror "The Army! No!"

"They didn't accept me." Steve finished.

"Oh... oh thank God!" Steve's mother gasped "You frightened me. I thought that we taught you better than that! All of what your father has said about the war and you still tried to join the Army! What made you try such a foolish thing!"

"I thought that I could help." Steve said simply.

"We don't need the help, Steven!" Mrs. Rogers said with resolve "Not from that! Your brother sends money and I work full time at the wire service now!"

That wasn't fully what Steve meant, but he just swallowed the lump in his throat and repeated "I thought that I could help, that's all."

Steve and his mother sat down for a simple supper, and he told her all about the break-up with Sara and the night of wandering. She listened intently and sympathized at all the correct spots, as any mother should, but he could tell that she was not displeased. He didn't make an issue of it any more than he had that his father did not come to the dinner table anymore.

"Can I... take papa his supper?" Steve asked hesitantly.

"You know that he doesn't like you to see him like this." Margaret Rogers said softly.

"I really need to talk to him." Steve said.

Steve took the thin soup and crackers on the tray into the room that he had spent so much time avoiding in the last months. It had two beds: one for his mother and one for his father, and in that bed Jack Rogers was dying. He had began to have trouble seeing in about 1937 but now he was totally blind. Sometimes he would fall into a delirium and begin shouting inarticulately or random obscenities. The Doctors called it syphilis, but to Steve it sometimes seemed as if there was a demon in his father. Very carefully he approached the bed.

"Papa. Its Steve. I'm here with your supper."

"I'm not hungry, I just ate." He said with a surprisingly even tone.

"Please eat some, papa." Steve almost pleaded.

"All right." Jack Rogers conceded, his blind eyes not turning to his son as the young man sat down.

Steve spoon fed his father some of the soup, much the way that his father must have when he was an infant, catching the dribble down his chin with a quick motion of the spoon. He had mashed the crackers up into the soup, just the way he liked it, which gave it a deceptive thickness that made it easier for him to eat it. It made Steve feel like he was dying inside to see his father like this.

"Pop... somehow I'm going to make everything all right." Steve insisted.

"You can't always do that, son." His dad chuckled "You're just like your mother sometimes."

"How?"

"You always think that you can fix everything. Sometimes things are wrong and there is just nothing that you can do about it."

"I refuse to accept that." Steve almost growled, still cranky from his lack of sleep.

"You have to, Stevie." Jack Rogers was talking to him as if he was still a much younger boy "You have to accept the things you can't change. You have to..." he hissed in pain.

"Papa?"

"I'm... you've got to have courage Steve. You need to have the courage to do what good you can in the world, but know that you can't change everything. There are no guarantees..."

Jack Rogers had suffered through years of increasingly painful treatments for the disease that wracked his body, but it was all for naught. He knew that he was losing the battle. He knew that he was dying. They all knew it, but nobody wanted to say it. Steve didn't know what he would do when that time came. He had loved and hated this man so much that when he was gone... where would all of that emotion go? He couldn't comprehend it. Here in bed was a man that didn't look anything like the one who had terrorized him as a child. He was pale, drawn, and sickly. He hardly looked alive at all. Steve held his hand for quite a while after the finished with his soup. Holding it as if letting go of it would be letting go of his own life.

Neither one of them said a word.

* * *

Rachel Leighton clutched Steve's hand as she listened, stunned by his recall of events when he could barely tell what was going on around him. She felt a deep ache in her soul that he thought she was Bernie Rosenthal. Steve had always been so tight-lipped about his past and focused on the present. She had never seen him like this, and the vulnerability was troubling to her. It had been so easy to give up on him. Too easy, in fact. She felt confused about some things, not having heard earlier parts of the story as Bernie had. She was deeply effected by it, though. It was as if in her mind's eye she could see the skinny kid named Steve inside the Adonis she had always know, determined to make the world safer no matter the cost.

His presence in this hospital bed showed that doing the right thing was no guarantee that things would turn out all right.

* * *

"What are we going to do, Frankie?" Steve asked his brother as they stood outside the building where they had grown up.

Thanksgiving had been a disaster. Jack Rogers had insisted on getting out of bed and eating with them, but had been so inept at it that he had made a mess. Then he had began shouting at Frank almost word for word what they had yelled in their last argument. Then he had fallen into a delirium and needed to be carried to the bed by Frank and Steve. It was as cold as it had been the day that he was kicked into the snow by that group of bullies, but they didn't seem to notice as they stood on the icy street. Frank had picked up smoking in the navy and lit a camel. He offered Steve one but he turned it down.

"A guy I work with on the ship is from Alabama, and he says that down there they have a saying that says a little something about this."

"What is it?" Steve asked.

"You dance with who brung ya." Frank said in an awful southern accent, making Steve laugh.

"What does that mean?"

"I guess that it just means that sometimes life has a way of handing you something less than ideal. A girl that ain't too pretty or a car that doesn't run half the time. You have to make the best of what you've got. Mom told me that you had a girl."

"Had a girl." Steve muttered "She ended it."

"Why?"

"I still don't know."

"She'll be back." Frank shrugged.

"What?"

"If you don't know why you broke it off nine times out of ten she'll be back once she realizes what she's missing. Girls are actually pretty hard to shake off."

"I manage somehow." Steve mumbled.

"You aren't out of the woods yet. She'll be back." Frank said confidently.

"I don't want to talk about her, Frankie." Steve insisted.

"I know that you are worried about pop, but you got to know that son of a bitch is tougher than he looks. He's been in tough spots before. He'll pull though this."

"You haven't been here, Frankie." Steve said "You haven't even seen the worst of it."

"What's that supposed to mean, Stevie? Are you trying to say that I just ran out on you guys and left you to clean up the mess, huh?"

"No, I didn't mean..."

"Let me tell you something, little brother. I haven't exactly been having a party since I left. Navy life is hard work and responsibility, something you don't know anything about."

"Frank..."

"You listen to me god damn it." Frank growled "I'm going to adjust your attitude right here. You are about to become a man, and when you do you have to put being a boy behind. Mom and pop have busted their ass so that you could go to college. I've busted my ass too. She told me about how you tried to join the Army. If you try anything like that again I'll beat the tar out of you. You don't have anything to prove to anybody. You don't have to be a tough guy. All you have to do is be responsible. You go to college, get a degree, marry your girl and have a happy life. Its too easy. Its all that they have ever wanted for you."

"What about what you want?" Steve asked.

"I want someplace to come home to when I'm done running all over the world." Frankie said "I feel like I've seen too much of it already."

* * *

John Joseph Rogers died Jan 2nd, 1939 on the way to the hospital after suffering a sudden seizure that led to a deadly stroke. Steve and Margaret had spent all of New Years eve and new years day watching over him like a vigil, when suddenly it struck. Steve spoke to no one for two days afterward, but refused to let himself cry. The suddenness of the death was a blessing for a man who had suffered for so long in so many ways. He would not cry for his father for many years, and it would always be difficult for him to speak of a man who had meant so much to him. Steven Rogers was 17 years old and in his final year of high school, and the fact that his father would never get to see him go to college after sacrificing so much left him feeling empty inside.

Steve stayed to watch the burial crew at work, throwing dirt down in the hole where they had deposited Jack Rogers. They were not acting how you would expect men performing a solemn duty would act. They were all smoking cigarettes and loudly laughing at jokes that Steve was too far away to hear. They threw dirt down haphazardly and even kicked down some of it with their feet. To them, Steve was invisible. Through the course of his life he had gotten used to that. He felt a soft hand on his shoulder and turned, expecting to see his mother, but was surprised when he saw Sara instead. He was so surprised that he couldn't say a word. He had not seen her since that night when they had exchanged those last, heated words. He had seen Mr. Pulaski at the funeral, and it made sense that she had come too, but he had not noticed her. He had been too focused on his mother's suffering and his father's silent form.

"I'm so sorry, Steve." Sara said, and with those words they drew one another into a silent embrace.

"I miss him already, Sara." Steve said, breaking the silence "I never thought that I would."

Sometimes there are no words that can be said to ease suffering, and sometimes no words are needed. Sometimes, all that matters is that there is somebody there feeling the very same thing. It is said that misery loves company, but that is not true. Humans love the company of others. Misery doesn't care.

* * *

For one week it was like that fall had never happened. Sara and Steve got back together with an ease that only made sense to those in their teen years. What they wanted to discuss they talked about at length, and what they didn't they wrapped in bundles of silence. The trips to the movies and the theater the walks in the park were back, and they even took a carriage ride on an evening when they were feeling romantic. Sara posed for several of his portraits, at least once of which he could not show his mother. Margaret Rogers once fiercely opposed their relationship, but it seemed as if the death of her husband had knocked the wind out of her sails. She didn't seem to care about anything anymore. She went to work, came back, and read Jack Rogers' old books when she was done cleaning the house. She had not touched any of the things in his study, just as she had not for their 20 years of marriage. When he told her that he was going out with Sara Pulaski she just nodded her head and smiled at him.

"That's nice, dear. Don't forget to take a warm coat." She said, as if he was still an eight year old going to play in the snow with a little girl.

Steve and Sara went to see "Gone with the Wind" that night at the movie theater. The breezy sweep of the melodrama was not what effected them so much. The undeniable raunch of the romance is not what did it. It was simply being in the dark for so long, together, that did it. In the darkness their lips touched again and again, others so enraptured around them by the movie that they did not see the two bringing into reality what others were only watching on the screen. Her hand clutched his as if afraid to let it go, and she clutched it still after the movie was over. In the lobby they stared into each other's eyes, knowing that something important was going to happen that night but not knowing a word for it. It was just another night time walk in the city. At least that is what Steve tried to tell himself.

She seemed more nervous than usual.

"Don't worry." Steve said "Whatever it is, it can't be that bad."

"I suppose." Sara said with a little smile "Tomorrow's gonna be another day."

He laughed at her horrible southern accent and responded gruffly "Frankly Scarlet, I don't give a damn." As they laughed together.

Her arm was in the crook of his as they walked, and for a moment he didn't feel like that limping weakling that was rejected by the Army. He almost felt like a man. She was so beautiful that night, wearing bright red lipstick and just a brush of rouge on her cheeks. It went so well with her green eyes. She had needed to fix that lipstick in her compact after they walked out of the theater. Too many stolen kisses had left it on his lips, which she had wiped away with a little handkerchief. They were a little more composed now, although they walked closely together to beat the cold.

They arrived at her stoop and Steve prepared to kiss her hand and politely say goodbye for the night, as had been the norm on all those dates, but she stopped him.

"Please... come up to the apartment." She said "Its too cold tonight."

"I... won't Mr. Pulaski..."

"My parents aren't home tonight." She said simply.

"Oh, then I definitely shouldn't."

"You aren't going to make me bat my eyes and twirl my parasol again, are you?"

Steve laughed, remembering that day in the hospital. He never could say no to her.

"Please come up, Steve. Just for something warm to drink." She almost pleaded.

"That would be great." Steve finally conceded.

* * *

Steve had no idea how it happened. One minute, it seemed, they were having tea and talking about how much fun they had that night. Then she had taken the cups to the kitchen. He had gotten up and followed her, with no idea why. They had folded into each other's arms and everything else seemed to fall into place. Now they were laying next to each other in her bed with no clothes on and she was crying. He had every idea of what to do but now he had no idea what to say.

"Just tonight... could it be like you are my husband... like I am your wife." She had whispered to him in the kitchen, and that had started everything. He held her as she cried but she wouldn't look at him.

"I love you, Sara." Steve told the crying girl, being the only thing he could think of.

"I know." she said between her sobs.

"Then what is wrong?"

"I didn't think that it would be like that."

"Was it so terrible?" Steve asked with concern.

"It was wonderful. So very wonderful." She sniffled "Too wonderful."

"I don't understand."

"Because I never told you the truth." She sobbed, turning to him with her red-rimmed green eyes. She held him tightly and the softness of her breasts against his bony chest sent an electrical excitement through him once again.

"What didn't you tell me?"

"About why I broke up with you."

"What was there to tell? Was there somebody else?" After what had just happened Steve didn't think that it would bother him so much if there had been.

"No. There was never anyone but you." She sniffled.

"What then?"

"I'm sick, Steve."

"What?"

"I'm sick and I'm dying and there is nothing that they can do about it."

Steve was stunned. It couldn't be true.

"I feel so selfish and what I've done is so wrong. I broke up with you because I saw how hard you were taking your father being sick, and I didn't want to see you pity me like that. I thought it would be best if we never saw each other again but I couldn't bear it. No matter what time I had left I wanted to spend it with you. Now I've done this and I'm still going to die and I don't want to I'm so afraid please no Steve forgive me I'm sorry..." Her sentence trailed away into inarticulate sobs of agony against his chest.

Steve held her in the darkness for a very long time, feeling as if he had been stabbed in the heart. There was none of the anger that she had feared from him. None of the rejection that he had feared from her. There was just the numbness of something that had felt so right suddenly so horribly wrong. Life was a beast sometimes, without mercy. Steven Grant Rogers learned that when he was 17 years old.

"How long?" Steve asked numbly.

* * *

There are moments in life that are the only ones that matter. Yet nobody seems to care about them and nobody ever asks about them. This was one of them. Steve had told the story many times and in many ways but he had always left this one out. When everyone asked how it was that Steve Rogers became a super soldier it always seemed to start in the lab, but no one ever had asked how he got there. He was a volunteer, after all, in a potentially deadly experiment. He must have jumped at the chance, right?

Wrong.

When Steve opened the door that night, he saw that his mother was entertaining guests. Suddenly he flashed such a worried look at her son that he almost took off running, but something kept him rooted to the spot. Three men in suits were standing around his living room wearing stern expressions.

"Steve!" Margaret Rogers exclaimed

"Mom?"

"These men... they are here to see you." She said as she literally wrung her hands.

"Young Steven Rogers, I presume?" The most friendly looking of the men said. If it were a few decades later Steve might say that this man reminded him of Dustin Hoffman.

"Yes sir." Steve said as he extended his hand.

"Pleased to meet you Steven, oh pleased indeed." The man had a slight accent and crooked teeth in a smile that only peaked out from under his bushy mustache. "My name is Professor Reinstein and I am working with the war department. I am here to see you regarding your appeal to your 4-F exemption from duty."

"The clerk told me that wouldn't do any good." Steve said.

"Well, you signed it anyway did you not?"

"Yes."

"Then perhaps we should talk." Professor Reinstein said. "Can we have a private moment, gentlemen?"

The big men nodded.

"We can talk in the study." Steve offered gracefully.

"Perhaps it would be better if we took a walk. Got some fresh air. Gentlemen, if you would entertain the charming Mrs. Rogers while I take a walk with her son." Reinstein said, seeming to give an order in a roundabout fashion.

Steve and Professor Reinstein only walked as far as the roof, because the Professor had asked to see Steve's favorite place. Many times over the years Steve had come up here to think, to see the view of the city skyline, and to draw it. He had hundreds of drawings of pigeons perched and taking flight against the sunset. Somehow being up here had made Steve feel above his problems.

"What do you need to talk to me about, Professor?" Steve asked without any reproach in his voice. Right now he was drained of emotion.

"I am here to give you the opportunity to do something very important!" Reinstein seemed very excited, and drew a pipe out of his pocket "Would you permit me?"

"It's a free country." Steve said with typical New Yorker attitude.

"Yes! Precisely! You are indeed what they said you were!" Reinstein said as he puffed the flame of a match into the pipe.

"What did they say?"

"Let us not worry about that." He said, waving his hand "You know who you are, and what others perceive is always an irrelevance. Let us focus on what matters."

"What is that, professor?"

"Your service to your country!"

"You came here in the middle of the night and frightened my mother to say that I can join the Army when I already have been rejected?"

"No. Well... yes... yet... never mind that I am too excited to explain just yet. Will you answer a question for me, Steven?"

"If you will be so kind as to ask, sir."

"Ah! Quick wit! Good! You will need quick wits!"

This was getting infuriating to Steve, so he just stared at the bushy-haired man who was the cause of all this pointless blathering.

"Steven... what would you say if I told you that you have the opportunity to be the most important man in the history of the world?"

"I would say that you were crazy."

"Ah! As would many. You gave the exact same answer to that question as our President Roosevelt!"

"You know the President?"

"We speak often, but how well do you really know a person? He has taken an interest in my work that is understandable given his condition."

"What work is that?"

"The most important work of this millennia!"

"Professor..."

"What if I was to tell you that because of your actions, not one person would ever have to suffer from the ravages of disease or infirmity ever again?"

That got Steve's attention.

"What if I told you that I could make you a perfect physical specimen, stronger and faster than any human being? That you could run like the wind? That you would never tire? That on the field of battle no man would be your equal?"

"I... wouldn't know what to say."

"Steven... let me cut to the chase. I am asking you a very dangerous thing. I am asking that you volunteer to be the first human test subject for a formula that I have worked on all of my life. A formula that, if it is successful, will make you the paragon of human might. A super soldier that will defend our shores from all the evil and oppression that threatens us from without."

"If it is successful?"

"I will not lie to you, Steven. If the formula is not successful you will not survive." Reinstein said with certainty "If you are not prepared to do that, I have talked to the wrong young man today. I think that you are, though. I have only talked to you for moments and I can already tell that you are brave."

"Not really..."

"But you are! Brave enough to volunteer to die for your country! Brave enough to struggle against the injustice of your rejection! Braver than you even know!"

"Professor..."

"Steven... I give you a chance to be the first of a new wave of humanity! The war department... it only wants its super soldier. I want to create a super man. That is why I chose you instead of the many they already have in service. It is my dream to wipe out the ravages of disease and infirmity, and once that is done all the injustices that we have lived under in this world will fall like dominos!"

"All disease?" Steve asked.

"Yes!"

"Even Leukemia?" Steve almost whispered.

"How odd to ask, but yes! The cancer of the blood will not stand against what the blood of my super soldier will become. All toxins and pathogens, even those produced by your own body, will not stand against the super soldier serum. What do you say, Steven? Will you help to make my dream a reality?"

Steve Rogers looked into the eyes of Emil Erskrine, who had been code named Reinstein, and made the most important decision of his life.

"Yes, professor. I will be your subject."

* * *

"I failed... Bernie..." Steve croaked to Rachel Leighton.

Rachel had not had the heart to contradict him and let him know that she was not Bernie Rosenthal. Even though her heart had broken a little more every time he had said it.

"You didn't fail, Steve... the experiment... you became a super soldier..."

"I failed Sara..." She noticed a sudden fluctuation of his vital signs.

"Steve..."

"I failed you..."

"Hang on, Steve..."

"I just wanted to tell you..."

"Doctor! Nurse! Somebody help please!" Rachel screamed.

"I always loved you Bernie..."

"Steve..."

"You always... reminded me... of Sara..."

"No!" Rachel screamed in frustration.

Captain America's vital signs went flat line, and the droning that echoed through the empty room was broken only by Rachel Leighton's cries for help.

_Next: Rebirth_

_Can anything save Cap now? Will his story ever be known? What of the Sinister Syndicate and their Cowled mastermind? How does Cyclops and the X-men fit into the picture? Tune in next week, True Believer!_


	7. Rebirth

**PRO: Thanks for all your support. Rock on!**

**AgentG: Sorry to confuse you. The killing Steve talked about was during the recent "Ice" storyline. More on that later! **

****

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Chapter Six: Rebirth**

****

_"Steven?"_

"What?"

_Steven?"_

"Who are you?"

_Steven. It is time for you to be reborn, Steven."_

"Professor? Is that you? It have been so long."

_"You will be the first, Steven. You will be the child of my dream. You will no longer suffer from weakness, infirmity, or disease. You will dodge bullets. You will run like the wind and never tire."_

"I'm so sorry professor. I never.. Your dream..."

_"You will be the first of a greater mankind. They want to create the perfect soldier, but I only want to create the perfect man. A better world where no one will need to suffer."_

"I failed you, professor."

_"You have not failed, Steven. As long as you live, my dream lives. So does yours."_

"I don't know, Professor Erskrine. Nothing seems to make sense anymore."

_"Steven, my boy, it never made sense in the first place."_

"I'm afraid, professor."

"_There is no shame in fear. All that matters is that you do not let your fear defeat you."_

"I remember, professor, but why are we talking again after all these years? Am I dead?"

_"You are not, Steven. It is not your time, yet. That it what I am here to tell you. You are in an in between place. You have been here before, many times, but have always fought your way back. You will do so again this time as well, for it is not yet your time."_

"Can't it be? I am so tired, professor. Haven't I earned a rest?"

_"That's exactly what I would expect from a weakling like you."_

"Daddy?"

_"Who else would talk to a worm like you? Listen to you whine. No son of mine would whine like that! What would your brother think if he heard you now?"_

_"Do not listen to him, Steven. You are not that little boy anymore you are a man reborn. Now go out into the world, Steven, because your mission is not done yet."_

* * *

"Clear!" Doctor Nash yelled, mashing the paddles down into Steve Rogers' chest.

Doctor Peter "Crash" Nash was determined not to lose this patient. It didn't matter to him that it was Captain America. He felt that way about all of his patients. They had kept him on call all night because he was the foremost emergency trauma surgical resident in the hospital. He had been sleeping in a broom closet when his beeper went off. Ever since his combat tour in the middle east in '91, while he was just an Air Force medical Para Jumper, he had never lost a patient. It was almost unheard of in his profession, and the reason why he was here. When the nation was in danger, they called Captain America. When a patient was in danger, they called Crash Nash. He zapped Steve Roger's chest again to no affect, and he knew what the next step would be. He would open his chest and massage his heart with his bare hands if he had to, but he hoped it didn't come to that.

"80 CCs of Adrenaline Stat!"

"Are you crazy?" The nurse yelled, before getting a withering glance

"Are you afraid I'm going to kill him? Just give it to me!" Nash yelled, snatching the needle from a terrified RN who had prepared it mindlessly.

Doctor Peter Nash had been called crazy before. An injection of this size could kill a man, but this was no ordinary man that was on his table. A doctor in this hospital had once been ridiculed for nearly letting Hercules die on his table because he refused to take into consideration the facts of his differing physiology. He had been labeled the doctor who couldn't revive a God and was a pariah in the medical profession. Nash had learned from that man's mistakes. Holding the syringe like a dagger he plunged it hard into Steve Roger's chest, eliciting gasps from the assembled medical professionals. He depressed the plunger with his thumb and shoved all the adrenaline directly into Steve's pulmonary artery. The readout of his heart rate spiked like the Himalayan mountain range and his body spasmed on the crash cart.

"You crazy son of a bitch!" A know-nothing intern yelled.

Sometimes you had to be crazy to do great things. Before everybody's stunned eyes, Captain America's heart rate began to stabilize, his BP rose to acceptable levels, and Peter Nash thanked God that it worked. He knew that this patient had heart muscles so strong that they would be at home in a rhino or a hippopotamus. All that he needed to do was kick start them and they would do the rest. Peter Nash had asked the almighty for many favors over the years, and he had never been disappointed yet. As the nurses and PAs swarmed around the stabilize and clean up the patient he walked straight into the wall and nearly rammed his head against it. Hyperventilating like he had just ran a mile.

He was getting too old for this.

"It's all right, Rachel." The Falcon said as he held her in his arms "Everything's going to be all right."

He was the only one that she really knew, and the only on that she trusted. He didn't look at her like the others did, with thinly masked distain. He had fought by her side before with Cap and was not as hopelessly judgmental at the rest of the Avengers.

"Falcon... thank you..." She said as she dried her tears.

"Call me Sam." Falcon asked. It wasn't an unreasonable request as his identity was public knowledge and had been for years.

All that she had really needed was for someone to tell her that Steve was going to be all right. Everybody else looked like they were already planning the funeral even though the doctors had come out and told them that his condition had stabilized again. Only a small core of the heroes who had arrived were still here. The FF had been summoned to take care of an emergency. The Defenders had drifted off for reasons as mysterious as their arrival in the first place. Now the only ones here other than Sam were the original Avengers: Iron Man, Thor, Hank Pym and the Wasp. Pym was wearing his Yellowjacket costume, but did it really matter what secret identity he had this week? It was disconcerting to see Iron Man in full armor reading an old copy of Entertainment Weekly while Thor was reading the New England Journal of Medicine. Hank and Jan were having a private conversation. Everyone looked exhausted and she felt like a fifth wheel. The last clown to leave the circus that it had become when he first arrived.

"I have to go. They say that it isn't safe for me to donate any more blood even though I have the super soldier serum. I have no reason to be here anymore."

"You're welcome here, Rachel. Don't let anybody make you think any differently."

"It doesn't matter. I'm not doing anyone any good here and I have too much to think about. I need to get back to my friends."

"Let me take you home." Falcon offered.

"Thank you, but believe me when I say that this girl can take care of herself."

"I know that." Falcon said with a tired smile.

"Could you... do me one favor Sam?"

"What do you need?"

"When Steve comes to don't let anyone tell him that I was here."

"Do you... really mean that?" Falcon asked.

"I don't want him to know." Rachel insisted.

"I'll respect your wishes, and let the others know too." Sam Wilson assured her.

One more time, despite her better judgment, she had gotten involved in the intoxicating life of Steve Rogers. She was already hung over. Now, despite the protestations of her heart and the emotions that tore at her, she walked out of his life again. She never intended to look back. As she walked out of the waiting room she passed Thor and offered him a smile. She got nothing back but a staring pair of blue eyes as cold as an artic fiord. Mere mortals could not expect to walk long with the Gods, those eyes told her. She couldn't agree more.

* * *

"Are you sure about this? Is this something that we should be involved in?" Warren Worthington III complained as the SUV tore down the highway.

An extremely irritable Hank McCoy turned around and glared from the passenger seat, his yellow eyes glowing in the dark.

"You only ask that question because you were never an Avenger." The Beast insisted.

"Maybe not, but I was a Defender and a Champion yet that didn't change anything."

Beside him in the driver's seat, Iceman resolved to stay out of this. Warren was only putting into words the objections that many others had harbored when Cyclops came barging in, half drunk, insisting that Warren come with him. He had burst in on an intimate moment between him and Paige that had erupted into a pointless argument on morality and ethics, who had any room to talk, who was a hypocrite, and which one of them Jean liked better when they were in school. If it hadn't been for Hank and Iceman they would still be arguing, but right now Cyclops was too hung over to argue. Bobby had made him an icepack that he was holding against his forehead, but who knew if that actually worked?

"Humanity never accepted us no matter what we called ourselves. What does that have to do with anything anyway? Captain America is a great guy, but he is only human. Maybe if he pulls through he should think about retiring. He's old enough to be my grandfather."

The Beast growled.

"Calm down, Hank." Cyclops groaned. "Let the rest of the X-men piss and moan. They've already had their say. The four of us decided what to do and we're going through with it. They can have their say again in the morning and it won't change a thing."

"Emma was really pissed." Iceman said, then smiled "It was great."

"She's going to have to learn that she can't have the last word on everything." Scott said so sharply it even made him wince.

"Why did Logan have to be such a jerk about it?" Bobby asked.

"Why does he have to be a jerk about anything?" Warren shrugged.

The Beast growled again. He was in a mood tonight.

"We are going to help a friend in need by any means necessary." Hank McCoy said in a tone that allowed for no argument.

"It is the right thing to do." Iceman backed him up, keeping his eyes on the road.

"That is the reason why the professor brought us together in the first place." Cyclops said from beneath his ice pack.

"Easy for all you to say." Angel complained as they pulled into the ER parking lot "It isn't YOUR blood."

* * *

Diamondback walked into her apartment and saw that the TV was on. She couldn't remember leaving it on, but she was too tired and emotionally drained to dwell on this. The door slammed behind her and all she could think about was getting to bed. It was turned to CNN, and images of Captain America scrolled by behind the anchor as he discussed the press conferences both presidential candidates gave wishing him well. It cut to the candidates little sound bytes and before she had even thought of it Rachel pulled off one of her earrings and hurled it at the screen. The weighted diamond dart blew out the screen with a loud snap and a puff of smoke.

"That's why we can never have nice things." An amused voice chided her from the kitchen.

"Tanya?" Rachel asked.

"Yes hon." Black Mamba said as she sauntered out of the kitchen. "Your doorman let me in. I was worried about you after you left like that without even telling us where you were going. Who was that cute blonde guy and the dude with the shades?"

"Don't ask." Rachel said as she blew a lock of her hair away from her face.

"That guy who was squashed by the SUV... it was him wasn't it?" Mamba asked.

"Yes." She almost whispered.

"Oh, honey..." Black Mamba said as she forced Rachel to sit down on the couch and knelt beside her "When are you ever going to learn?"

"I don't know." Rachel said. If she had any tears left she probably would have started crying again.

"He's one of the other guys, you know. You're the one that told me that there was no way it would work out between you two."

"It was easy to say when I never had to see him." Rachel said.

"But when you saw him... that was something different." Mamba finished it for her.

"I missed him." Rachel said "I missed everything about him every day that we were apart, and then there he was. I didn't know what to do and I wasn't thinking about anything but him."

"He has that effect on women." Black Mamba said, thinking back to all of her own run ins with the Avenger.

"I'm so sorry for leaving you and Deidre high and dry."

"Don't worry about it. We stole your car. It was easy since it had no windows."

"Oh, no. I wasn't even thinking about my car."

"You're lucky it wasn't one of the ones that was totally trashed. Your boyfriend in blue is going to have even less friends in that bar than he already..."

"He's not my boyfriend..."

"So that's what he was doing with Letha..."

"That air headed cunt!" Rachel snarled "He wouldn't be caught dead with..."

The silence hung in the air as Rachel slowly closed her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Rachel." Black Mamba said. "If its any consolation, they say on the news that he is expected to fully recover."

"Nobody would expect anything else from him." Rachel said, her eyes still closed.

"Let me get you something to drink. You look totally wiped out."

"Then I must look better than I feel."

Black Mamba could never know about the real reason why Rachel Leighton was in such a deep despair. The last words that Steve had said to her before falling into unconsciousness haunted her just as much as the knowledge of what he did for love. He had allowed himself to be used like a guinea pig just for the slim chance to save the life the girl he loved, and she felt so shallow and unworthy of love like that. She realized too late the passion that he hid under that blue mask, and was humbled by it. All that she had ever wanted was to get him into bed. She had been obsessed with his perfect body and with the genuine kindness he showed everybody. Even his greatest enemies were treated with respect by Steve Rogers. But when she heard him say that he had always loved Bernie she knew the truth. She was just the rebound girl, and that is what broke her heart.

It was over between them at last, which was the hardest thing to accept.

* * *

Déjà vu is a strange thing. Some explain it as the repetition of events dimly remembered, and seeing the repetitious pattern of many lives that makes sense. How do you explain it, though, in a life so unique as the one that belonged to Steven Rogers, with so many unique events. When He opened his eyes and squinted out the crusty feeling of sleep Steve saw them standing around him. Just as they were standing around him all those years ago. The only difference is that this time he was warm, and then he was so cold. The original Avengers looked down on him this time with smiles on their faces and a collective relief that could be seen even by the groggy super soldier that lay on the hospital bed.

"Steve... we're so glad that you are awake." Janet Van Dyne said, looking almost as if she wanted to be tearful but was trying to be brave.

"You gave us quite a scare, soldier." Hank Pym said. His weariness was apparent even under the mask that concealed his eyes.

"Where am I?" Steve asked weakly.

"You are at Mount Sinai hospital." Tony Stark said "I've seen to it that you have received the finest medical care available.

"Rest assured that - had I still the medical knowledge of Donald Blake - that the son of Odin would have been the first to treat thee, Captain." Thor said.

"I'm sure that you would have done a fine job, Thor." Steve said as he looked left and right. His neck popped as if it had not moved in quite some time, but at least it moved.

That is when he looked down and saw that he had no casts on his legs.

"What happened... my legs were crushed." In his confusion he realized that he could move his legs under the sheet and tried to sit up, but strong hands held him down.

"Not yet, old friend." Iron man said "Doctor's orders."

"I feel... fine." Steve said again, his confusion evident.

"Well, it is hard to explain." Hank Pym said "Kind of a bit of _Deux ex machina,_ no offense to Thor."

"None taken, friend Pym." Thor insisted.

"More like angelic intervention." The Wasp laughed.

"Basically speaking, you got a minute blood transfusion from the Angel that had immense curative properties. Your bones were only set by the orthopedic surgeon last night and eight hours later they cut the casts off. If the X-men hadn't showed up when they did... well... it was very bad Steve." Pym said.

"Angel... X-men... blood?" Cap was even more confused.

"The X-men have known that the Angel's blood had healing powers for some time, but everybody up to and including the media is trying to keep it under wraps. I guess that they aren't interested in any stories that make mutants look good." Tony Stark said bitterly.

"They didn't come here for the publicity anyway, Steve." Janet said "Hank McCoy demanded it because of what you told him all those years ago."

"Once an Avenger always an Avenger." Cap said "That's what I told him when he left."

"Truer words were never spoken." The words came from the hallway, and when Steve turned his head he saw Hawkeye and the Falcon in the door.

"Clint..." Steve said "How did you... the Syndicate... what happened?"

"I'll tell you all about that later, old timer." Hawkeye said "I'm sorry that I haven't been able to be here. I had to straighten things out with Melissa."

"I knew that she hadn't turned on us." Steve said "I could see it in her eyes."

"She saved your life." Clint Barton said "That won her some points with law enforcement. She is under protective custody at the mansion until we can be sure that the Syndicate won't come after her."

"Meanwhile, you have a to stay here for a couple of days for observation." The Falcon said "One of us are going to be here in the room with you at all times, so you won't be lonely."

"Well, then it won't be all bad." Cap said with a smile.

* * *

A week later it was the first week of September, and Steve Rogers was finally released from the hospital. He thought that a week of bed rest was a little much, but he realized fairly quickly how much time was really needed to heal the damage that had been done. The infusion of the Angel's blood had knit his broken bones quickly but if he had gone right back to his usual level of activity there was no chance that they would stand up to that abuse. His body still felt like one huge bruise. His surgical scars were healing more everyday, which was bizarre to see. The hardest thing to describe was the way that he felt.

He remembered the last time he felt like that too well.

Back at the mansion, where Jarvis insisted he convalesce further, he spent most of his days sketching quick studies of the parade of well wishers that came to see that he was all right. For some reason he felt very solidly the need to draw again. He had felt like this a couple of times in his life. Again and again the old soldier had come back to the talent that had consumed his younger days. His favorite sketch during this time had also been his favorite conversation. Late one night a beautiful women joined him at the fireside with a bottle of red wine and a mischievous grin. He had returned the smile and taken the glass. When he asked about her better half she had said that he never drank... wine. She was wearing one of her silky nightgowns that didn't leave much to the imagination despite providing demure coverage of all the disputed areas. Steve was Captain America, but he was a man as well. There was no way that he could say no.

Whether you called her Wanda Frank, Wanda Maximoff, Wanda Lensheer, or Wanda Vision (as Hawkeye once joked her married name should be) you had to agree that she was the Scarlet Witch. Steve had never told her, but she was his favorite model. She had a beauty that reminded him of Vivian Leigh in that half-remembered melodrama the night he kicked down the door to manhood. He had always been attracted to her. He could not imagine a sane man who would not be. However, he had not let that fact cause the drama that other members of the team had. Attraction was a natural response, and Steve was masterful at fighting nature. He was not embarrassed by those feelings he had for her, but rather had long ago decided that it would not be appropriate to act on them. Ever.

Steve Rogers had decided that in the interest of professionalism he would show her his feelings with his pencil, and with his kindness, but with nothing else.

"You always idealize me too much." Wanda laughed as she looked at one complete sketch during their conversation, her sultry and exotic Transian accent causing that familiar stirring in him that he shoved back down like a stubborn jack in the box. "Where are all the flaws that I obsess about in the mirror?"

"I don't draw the flaws." Steve said as he started in on another sketch "I draw the world I see."

"What world is that?" She said before putting the glass to her lips.

"The world as it should be." Steve said simply, continuing his toil with pencil smudged fingers. "The world I would like to live in."

"Always the dreamer." She said at him in a silky tone.

"Always." He agreed.

She was posing for him now, he could tell. People acted one way when they were themselves and another when they were posing. Before she had been just talking, and he had drawn her as she was without asking her to stand still. Now, though, she had laid down on the couch with one hand tangled in her hair and the other carefully holding the glass. She always had to be careful about how she gestured, as the wrong one at the wrong time could cause a disaster. She wanted this picture to be a good one. She wanted to please him. She had always wanted that, and he had always known why.

"Steve... have you ever thought about getting married?" Wanda asked in a tone that tried to be conversational but somehow wasn't "Having children?"

"You know that Bernie and I were engaged." he stated, dodging the question artfully.

"I mean since then." She persisted.

"All the time." Cap admitted.

"Then why..." She seemed like she didn't know how to phrase what she was trying to say.

"There is never room for romance in my life." Steve said sadly "I've tried but... I've realized that I can't be like a normal man. I can't offer a woman what she needs. I can't give what any woman deserves." He hadn't meant to put it like that, but deep inside that was truly the way he felt.

"I don't suppose that I can blame you." Wanda said as she twirled her hair and took another drink "Hank and Jan divorced. Patsy and Damian had a hell of a marriage. The Vision and I had our marriage annulled and our children..." Her brow crinkled a little and for a moment he stopped drawing because he did not want to capture the most minute speck of the great loss he saw on her features.

"It isn't that." Steve tried to pull her out of that dark place where her memory was heading.

"It just seems to me like all of our marriages and relationships fail. None of us are married or starting a life together right now. Other than Reed and Sue, can you name one so called super hero who..."

"Spider-man." Cap said

"What?" The Scarlet Witch was shocked.

"Spider-man is married."

"How... how do you know?" She asked in an incredulous tone.

"Attention to detail." Cap said "During the Carnage riots I found him beat up in the park. When I helped him to his feet I felt a wedding ring under his glove."

"Really? He always seemed so young!"

Steve smiled at that, thinking of the young lady in red all those years ago who could not have had a year or two on a high school freshman.

"How can you really know? Have you ever actually met his wife?"

Steve thought of a beautiful redhead he met in an airport, smiling with surprise and embarrassment from an unexpected introduction.

"Yes." Steve said with a smile "I think I have."

"Who is she?" Wanda asked "Spider woman?"

"Just an ordinary woman, I think." Steve continued his drawing, having drawn her attention entirely away from her own pain with this bit of gossip.

"That is one thing that I have noticed." Wanda said with a knowing smile "You tend to date on the ordinary side. You don't really go after the other super women that are all around you. They all adore you, you know."

Steve looked at her knowing gaze and saw without a doubt what she was talking about.

"Most women... in the Avengers and otherwise... I have worked with or have to team with on a regular basis." Steve said delicately "I don't believe that it is professional to fraternize like that."

"We all know that." Wanda laughed "That is what makes all of them so interested. Making yourself forbidden fruit like that... If only you could hear some of the things they say about you when you can't overhear."

Cap just raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, don't look at me like that. You know what I'm talking about. It isn't as if Tigra has exactly been shy about it. Greer is the worst, but she isn't the only one. Jennifer is a big perpetrator as well. There was a wager between them at one time, you know, when they were on the team together."

"Oh?" Cap asked.

"Yes! They were wagering on who could have you first. That is why their costumes kept getting smaller and smaller." Wanda laughed.

"Well, you have to know that I did not..."

"Of course not. Captain America, sentinel of liberty give in to his libido? The sky would fall." Wanda almost sounded bitter as she took another drink. He realized that she had downed a great deal more than he.

"Wanda.." Steve said gently as she broke her pose and he put the pad down.

"I know about what happened with you and Jan." Wanda cut him off.

"Nothing happened..." Steve argued.

"Of course it didn't." Wanda said hatefully "After Hank's nervous breakdown she came to you. Don't try to deny it. She came for help and you turned her away."

"She didn't come for help she came for..."

"It was the only thing that was going to help her. Hank beat her, Steve. He made her feel like trash and she needed to feel like somebody in this world loved her even if it was only for one night. Because you didn't want any awkwardness she followed your advice."

"I only told her it was best to date outside the team." Steve said.

"So that is exactly what she did. She turned to Tony because she didn't know he was Iron Man." Wanda looked very angry, as if these feelings were building.

"I couldn't have foreseen that." Steve argued "When I found out I tried to get Tony to do the right thing and break it off."

"Of course. You always are filled with good advice on how somebody should do the right thing, but what about you?"

"I do my best." Cap said "I'm not perfect. I'm only a man and I make mistakes too."

Wanda stood and violently threw her glass into the fireplace, losing her composure and inadvertently unleashing her hex power. The fireplace belched an inexplicably huge fireball that wine could not account for. It almost reached the couch and caused Steve to flinch away. If she wanted his undivided attention, then she had gotten it.

"That is the thing that you don't understand, Steve! You don't make mistakes! Everything that you do... is so right. Why? You hold yourself to this impossible standard and make everyone around you ashamed because they can't match up. Can't you see that it is tearing us all apart? Can't you see that it is tearing YOU apart? You nearly died Steve! I know that it can happen to any of us at any time but when it happened to you I felt like I was going to die too! I didn't know what to do! None of us knew what to do! Before you came along the Avengers were a social club that fought crime! What would the Avengers be without you? What would I be without you? Just another mutant slut like they call me in the newspapers. The mutie slut that married a toaster!" Wanda almost screamed it as she burst into tears and buried her face in her hands.

Steve took the two short steps between the chair he was sitting on and the couch where Wanda was sobbing and did the only thing that he could think of. He took her in his arms. She did not resist, but grabbed onto him even more fervently.

"It is all right, Wanda... I'm sorry I upset you. None of those horrible things they say mean anything. Those are just the hurtful words of ignorant people."

"It isn't that! I've dealt with their ignorance all of my life! I just didn't want to lose you." Wanda sobbed "I didn't want you to die without knowing how much you meant to me. I never told you. You were the first man in this world that ever showed me any kindness and didn't expect anything in return. My father... Magneto... he didn't know that I was his daughter and he... I can't talk about that. Pietro loved me like a brother should but he wanted to possess me. Clint... I know there was only one thing that he wanted. It was only you, Steve. Don't you know that I married Vision because I was afraid of men? I was... I was never afraid of you."

"Wanda..."

"I love you, Steve. Do you... know how hard it is to say that? More so when I know that you will never say those words to me?" Tears were running freely from her eyes and her upper lip trembled as she said the words. She had never looked less like Vivian Lee, or more like Wanda.

"You're wrong, Wanda." Steve said as He gently patted her on the back, trying not to realize just how much of a woman he was holding in his arms. "You're wrong about me."

"How could I be?"

"Because you don't know me at all. Nobody does. You only know Captain America and have no idea who Steve Rogers is."

In the next hour Steve repeated his story as he had to Bernie and - unknowingly - to Rachel. This time, with his words, he drew for Wanda the world as it was and not the way he wanted it to be. There were secrets that he needed to tell, and for some reason he felt like this conversation with Wanda was far overdue. How could she have known him so well and so long and not understood that he was still that same little boy that walked into the induction center trying to run away from his problems? Was he that good of an actor? Had this... character that he had willed himself to be become so complete that everyone believed it as fervently as she? It made him feel like a fraud, and he truly felt that - if there was such a thing - Wanda was the right person to tell this story to. Wanda would understand.

As the story progressed their posture gradually shifted to a more comfortable position. It had started out with that first awkward embrace. Through the first portion of the tale it had grown into a closer embrace. Through the description of his discoveries of evil abroad they had drifted further apart. By the time he was recounting his meeting with Sara they were both drinking wine again, comfortably lounging on opposite sides of the sofa with their feet almost touching. As the embers in the fire burned low and he approached the part of the story that he had told Rachel he grew too emotional, and almost stopped. He closed his eyes like the doors of the Hoover dam to prevent the tears that were fighting their way through. He did not see, but he felt, Wanda climbing over his body like a mountaineer and settling down into his arms. As he approached the next part of his story they were laying like lovers in a post-coital embrace, her hand over his heart and his playing through her curls.

The wine tasted so sweet.

* * *

February 1939

"You've got to understand mom!" Steve pleaded.

"The only thing that I understand is that your father is rolling in his grave! He worked so hard so that you could go to college..."

"He never even asked me if I wanted to go! I didn't! I've never been any good in school!"

"Jack only wanted what was best for you!"

"He wanted me to live his dream! I refuse to do that! Look at where his dream got him! I'm going to live my life the way that I want to! I want to see the world! I want to fight these fascist bastards any way that I can! I want to be a man for once! Is that so wrong?"

"I just want my son..." Margaret pleaded "Is that so wrong? You are all that I have left in this world."

"Nothing will happen to me. I told you that Doctor Reinstein will only permit me to perform light indoor duty." Steve lied. He was not permitted to tell her about the experiment.

"What about your little girlfriend?" Margaret Rogers asked in a tone of condescension. "Are you going to marry her and whip her off to some awful base that makes this neighborhood look like a luxury hotel?"

"She's staying behind." Was all Steve was prepared to say. "We've already talked, and she is prepared to wait for me."

"Yes yes yes... like I waited for your father. Can I deter you at all by telling you how terrible that was? Not only through the war, but the time he refused to come back?"

Steve swallowed.

"When it is my time, I'll come back." Steve insisted.

"That's exactly what your brother said, but when his tour was done he just signed up again." Steve's mother sighed.

"I miss him just as much as you do, mama, but he is doing his duty."

"You sound just like your father did."

"I wish that I had known him then."

* * *

His mother did not come to see him off.

Standing in the bus station waiting for the charter bus that would take the inductees to Fort Drumm. His palms were soaked with sweat and he was convinced that he had made the wrong decision. There was no going back now, though. The other inductees were looking at him with suspicion. They were all physically fit and healthy looking young men. Steve visibly was not. With how nervous and peaked he was it even seemed more unlikely that this was where he belonged. He had needed to lie to everyone about why he was leaving, but there was one person that he could not bear lying to. He had told her everything.

His heart felt like it was drowning until he saw the taxicab pull up. It was that same beat up taxicab that he had spent so many afternoons in, and it made him feel warm in the February cold just to see it. Mr. Pulaski got out of the driver's side door and Sara got out of the other. They were both bundled up like kids going to a snowball fight. They both came and grabbed Steve in their big, puffy embrace.

"I'm proud of you for this, Grant." Mr. Pulaski said, knowing his real name but still calling him by the one he had given all those years ago.

"Don't make such a fuss, Mr. P." Steve laughed "Its no big deal."

He could tell that Mr. Pulaski was putting on a brave face for him. He knew of his daughter's hopeless condition but didn't know that Steve knew. They didn't want anyone to know. That is the thing about tragedy. People sometimes think that not talking about it will make it go away. Steve knew a little something about that. He was surprised when Sara unabashedly threw her arms around his neck and kissed him full on the lips. He had never expected her to do that right in front of her father.

The old man only smiled.

"I should leave you alone for minute or two." Mr. Pulaski said "Lots to say and not much time, yes?"

He walked over to the other inductees and took turns speaking with them and shaking their hands as he had done to Steve. After all that he had been through Mr. Pulaski still loved America and loved these young men for going out to defend it.

"Steve... you don't have to do this for me." Sara said so very softly.

"I am doing it for you." Steve insisted "For you, and everyone like you."

"I love you, Steve. You don't have to prove anything to me. It doesn't matter to me how much longer I have but I want to spend that time with you." She sniffled, and he couldn't tell if it was the cold or her sadness that was causing it.

"I can't turn my back on you, Sara." Steve said "I tried once and it was like cutting off my own arm. I have to go through with this because it is your only chance. Our only chance. I want to grow old with you, Sara. I want you to be the mother of my children."

That sent the tears rolling for both of them, and their lips locked together again in the most passionate kiss of their young lives. It was like the flood all over again, standing on the skyscraper as the tidal wave rushed by. This time, though, it was so much more powerful and desperate, and caused the world around them to become a white void. In that moment it was not cold at all, they did not hear one of the murmuring voices all around them. It was as if, in that moment, they were the only two people in all creation.

Then the moment passed.

* * *

"My name is Staff Sergeant Dennis!" The burly non commissioned officer at the front of the bus bellowed, smacking a swag stick into the palm of his hand. "As far as you maggots are concerned, my name is Drill Sergeant. Do you understand me?"

"Yes Drill Sergeant!" The assembled inductees hollered.

"I didn't see your lips move, maggot!" He screamed, pointing the swag stick at one unfortunate fellow who had been caught off guard by everyone else's response.

"Yes Drill Sergeant!" He tried to scream, but his voice cracked into a wheezing falsetto that make the entire bus laugh.

"Funny, huh? I'll show you maggots funny!" SSG Dennis yelled "You have just six seconds to get off this goddamn bus!"

The recruits were stunned for a whole second.

"GET OFF MY BUS!!!!" The Drill Sergeant erupted.

As the recruits spilled out of the bus like clowns out of that tiny car in the circus the NCO unleashed a river of profanity that some of these young men had never heard in their entire lives. Even to Steve's jaded New Yorker ears some of the epitaphs rung with vicious originality and the inventiveness of verbal experimentation.

"You're in the Army now farm boy!" He screamed at one big drink of water "You're not behind a plow! You'll never be rich you son of a bitch! You're in my world now!"

The recruits lined up along a line chalked in the cement and the Sergeant started calling names from a clip board. With each of the names called the recruits were forced to run to one of three other lines that were forming outside of a foreboding brick building that reminded Steve of a meat packing plant near his home. His name was never called. The NCO just walked up to the bus driver and said a few words that made the man drive off. He pointedly ignored Steve.

"Drill Sergeant..." Steve had the courage to speak up.

"Did you say something, boy?" The NCO snarled.

"Yes, Drill Sergeant! Why didn't you..."

"You are speaking to a non commissioned officer, son! Get your ass at parade rest!"

Steve complied, but didn't get a chance to ask his question.

"Did I speak to you?" The Sergeant screamed with insane eyes.

"No Drill Sergeant, but..."

"I don't know how you got on that bus, boy, and I don't care! You aren't on my list and you aren't coming into my building! There is a county road about three miles that way!" He yelled, pointing down the dirt road to Fort Drumm with his thumb before evening out his tone of voice to a low, menacing growl "I suggest you start walking."

Just like that he left him, standing at attention on a white chalk line. Steve had no idea how long he stood there in the cold. He didn't know what to do. Were they testing him or was this all just a big joke? Had somebody at the induction center set all this up? _Lets get that stupid kid who lost his temper to go all the way to Drumm. Lets tell him we're going to give him a magic potion that will make him a real man. _What a knee slapper.

"There you are, Steven." A familiar voice brought him out of his glowering doubt.

"Dr. Reinstein?" Steve saw the bushy-haired doctor happily clopping along with an over-decorated General officer in tow.

Steve nervously snapped off a salute to the General, to which the officer offered back only a worldly smile.

"Lower your hand, son, unless you're shading your eyes from the light." He said sarcastically, as he would say to Steve again 60 years in the future after he had passed his 100th year in this world.

"This is General Phillips." Dr. Reinstein said with a dismissive wave of his hand "He was the one who discovered you at the induction center. He told me about you and gave me your information. Of the five candidates I was presented he gave you the highest recommendation."

"Don't let it go to your head, son." The General said as he shook Steve's surprised hand "You should have seen the other ones."

* * *

In the week ahead Steve was taken under the wing of Professor Erskrine and General Phillips. They put him up in quarters separate from the other enlisted soldiers and he was not provided with either uniform or equipment. He was considered a civilian and treated as such. He wasn't sure how to feel about that, especially when he saw how the recruits were treated. They were regularly smacked with swag sticks and forced to exercise constantly. They seemed to always be on the receiving end of verbal abuse that was unsettlingly like his father had treated him growing up. Instead he was woken up promptly at 5 AM every morning by a young Lieutenant and taken to the medical center. He was subjected to a battery of tests that made the examination at the Induction center look like a friendly handshake. Stress tests, muscular failure tests, pain threshold tests, and chemical tolerance tests were all part of the regimen. Some of them were even enjoyable, such as the toxicology test where they kept having him drink liquor to record at what point he was unable to perform a variety of simple tasks that they had outlined for him. College students all over the country would call such an activity a drinking game, but they called it science. What is in a name, after all?

By the third day they had all the information they needed about his overall level of health, and let him know that it was not impressive. It was then that they began with a series of injections. They said that some of them were "booster shots" or "inoculations" but some of them made him violently ill. The next week for him was a misery of illness where he would drift in and out of consciousness. Sometimes he was bedridden and sometimes he was forced to get up and exercise. The week seemed to last forever.

"When is this going to be over, Professor?" Steve asked Dr. Reinstein as he dripped with sweat and trembled in the chair he had been provided in his spartan living quarters.

"You are doing wonderfully, Steven. When you fully absorb the chemical compounds into your bloodstream you will be ready to ingest the catalytic compound that will make it active. What you feel right now is your own immune system battling the chemicals as it would any biological invader. In a day, maybe two, we will be able to proceed and you will never need fear illness again."

He had many thoughtful conversations with Professor Reinstein over the period of that week. The professor was delighted with his interest in art and had brought many of his books on human anatomy and physiology, giving Steve primers on the underlying structure of the human form. The passion with which he talked with Steve about the ideal human form bordered on mania, but he was a man driven by those passions. He taught Steve things about art that he had never learned in school, such as the divine proportion and the divided man of Leonardo Di Vinci. In a way, this mad chemist taught Steve more about art than any other man.

"Your art shows an eye for perfection, Steven!" The excited Professor said "You see in your minds eye the world as I want to make it! So long have so many suffered, and we are on the verge of making it so that they will never need to worry again about their flaws and imperfections."

"Nobody is perfect, Professor." The sweat-soaked Steve had said.

"Nobody yet." The professor said with a smile ""But you will be, Steven. You will be."

* * *

The day of the final experiment had arrived, and Steve was sick to his stomach. His actual illness had passed, but now it was only his nerves that made him nauseous. General Phillips was bringing the assembled brass of the War Department to view the final stage of the experiment. He was going to be unveiled like the new model from Chevrolet. Professor Reinstein told him that this was the most dangerous part of the experiment. His body had accepted the biochemical changes to his cellular structure, enabling the cells to achieve a greater potential despite the conflicting information of his DNA and RNA structures. Now what was needed was to saturate his body with what Professor Reinstein called his "Vita-Rays." The Vita-Rays worked in concert with a massive ingestion of vitamins and minerals that he was to drink in order to build both the musculature of his body and finish the changes to his physiology that the serum injections had begun. It would, the Professor insisted, provide a great leap in his mental abilities as well as his physical ones.

If they were not successful, the Vita-rays could be fatal.

Steve was very afraid, but could not admit it to anyone. Everywhere he was surrounded by military men who seemed so fearless and unflappable. Everybody was so determined to do their part to protect the nation. The soldiers, the scientists, the doctors, and even the girls who worked in the office all seemed so committed. He felt a great weight of guilt for his fear. If this was his role, if this was the only way that he could make a difference, wasn't he obligated to do it? Wasn't it his responsibility and duty? If he died doing it, wouldn't it be his only chance in life to be a hero?

"It is time, Steven." Professor Reinstein said kindly.

"I'm afraid, Professor." Steve Rogers told the doctor, the only person that he had ever admitted that to.

"So am I!" The Professor said "There is no shame in fear! All that matters is that you do not let your fear defeat you."

"I'm ready." Steve said simply.

"It is time for you to be reborn." Professor Reinstein said with a smile.

They walked into the lab together.

* * *

Pain.

Pain was one the one thing that he would remember most from that day. After drinking the boiling draught of vitamins Professor Reinstein had given a grand speech with flair and showmanship. Then he had been placed under the apparatus. Then there had only been the pain. The bombardment had set his cells on fire and caused such agony as he had never known. He was struck speechless and unable to scream as his skin stretched over his expanding musculature. His very skeletal structure expanded, causing him to grow nearly a half foot in height within moments. His brain was flooded with a cross traffic of neurological signals which made memories randomly fire into his mind, overlapping each other, melting together, threatening to make him go mad. He had no idea how long it took, but it seemed beyond eternity. It was then that Steve Rogers, as he had known himself, ceased to be forever. It was then that he was reborn.

It a moment he was back to reality, and there was not one single ache or pain in his entire body. For a moment he thought that he was dead. After all, how could anyone suffer pain like that and not die from it? Then his eyes focused, and he was still in the lab. The faces were still staring at him, but in gape-mouthed wonderment instead of staid skepticism. He felt better than he had ever felt in his life. His eyesight was the first thing to notice, taking in all the details that his fuzzy vision never did. His clarity of thought was next, as his notions seemed to race through his mind like a record player cranked up to X3 speed. Most of all, the very feeling of power in his body. The feeling like there was no weight he could not lift. Like there was nothing that he could not do. He would only feel that again in his life decades later, when he would lift Thor's hammer and feel for a moment how it was to be a God. Then he heard the words that he would always remember.

"He will be the first of many! He will be a Captain to protect the shores of America from foreign invasion, and like him America will grow strong enough to defend her shores." Professor Reinstein said.

Those were his last words before he fell. Gunshots echoed throughout the chamber as the observation window shattered. Steve, in the first few moments of his rebirth, was spattered with the blood of Emil Erskrine. Then the apparatus of the Vita-Ray projector was struck by the gunfire, cathode tubes exploding like popcorn and the entire mess bursting into flames.

"For the Fatherland!" A man in the observation booth screamed "For the Furher!"

Then it was like time slowed, as he raced toward the observation window without thought. His bare feet crunched on broken glass but he did not feel a thing. All that he could think of was reaching this man before he could turn his Luger on General Phillips and the others. The assassin's eyes widened as an impossibly strong hand crushed his wrist and pulled him through the remaining glass of the observation window with an effortless tug. He had to be a 200 pound man, but he was thrown like a rag doll.

"You murdering scum!" Steve heard himself say.

Steve swung his first punch at the crouching man as hard as he could, still having no idea of his strength. He drove his fist into that man's sternum, hearing a crackling sound that he would not know until afterward was his ribs shattering like glass inside his chest. He did not have long to suffer because the second punch he leveled him with turned his face into a Carravagio painting, busting him open like a ripe tomato and throwing him across the room. He stood there for a moment in shock, seeing the gore dripping from his fist and the spasming body of the assassin smoking like a burger on a barbecue grill from the electrical equipment he had landed on. The Assassin's blue eyes stared at him without accusation, without feeling, just like the man in the wrecked cage of the streetcar all those years ago. He knew without a doubt that the man was dead, and that he had killed him.

"Steven..." He heard a weak voice next to him, and turned to see the bleeding form of Professor Emil Erskrine.

"Professor!" He yelled as he rolled him over, and saw the mess that the bullets had made out of him. Entering through his back, they had blown gruesome holes in his stomach and chest, pumping out red blood and black fluids. "Oh, God. Don't worry Professor! I'll get you a doctor! DOCTOR!"

"Steven... do not... worry about me." Erskrine gasped "It is my time to go... my mission is done..."

"No it isn't, Professor." What about the world that you have dreamed of? Don't you want to live to see it happen."

"I have." Erskrine said with a tear trickling out of his eye "I wanted only a son. That was my dream that... nature would not let me have. You are like the son... I never could have in this world... as long as you live... my dream lives on." Erskrine gasped out.

"Professor..."

"Steven. You are the first one... you will be the only one... I never wrote... the formula down on paper..."

Steve was stunned by the reveilation, and struck silent by it.

"You are the hope now... go out and show the world... that freedom means something... please Steven... give them hope... don't let me die in vain."

Professor Emil Erskrine died in Steve Roger's arms, and his hope died with him.

* * *

They were talking about him like he wasn't even there.

"Are you kidding? That's all?"

"A totally failed experiement."

"We spent millions on this project, and he still has normal human strength?"

"The sub mariner can throw tanks around like kids toys and has bulletproof skin! He can tear steel like a candy wrapper! This is what Erskrine promised us!"

"He couldn't deliver. This man is the peak of human potential, but not the enhanced human we were hoping for."

"We could probably recreate the formula given enough time and money, but for what purpose? It won't give us the Super Soldier we need to win this war, and it is not cost effective to promote this research as a jumped-up inoculation."

"This is a disaster! With the Nazis ahead of us on human enhancement and these damn mutations that keep happening..."

"I wonder if the Nazis know about the mutations yet. Who is our top man on mutations?"

"His name is Hudson, but he's with the Canadians now."

"I say we send Hudson the results we have on this research. Maybe he can work backwards from it and make something constructive out of it. Where is he again?"

"Alkali Lake."

"Get it to him on the double. Tell him that Project: Rebirth is a big huge bust. Maybe he can salvage something out of this mess."

"What do we do with him?"

"I don't care. Put a uniform on him and throw him in with all the other privates. He wanted to join the Army. He got his wish."

"Maybe we can keep him under observation and see if there are any unforeseen side effects."

Just like that, Steve Rogers was just another failed experiment.

* * *

Private Steve Rogers was an exemplary recruit that won top honors in every facet of his basic combat instruction. He shot a perfect score at the rifle range every time. He was unsurpassed in the realm of physical training. He learned Army regulations chapter and verse better than his instructors, as his memory was like a steel trap. Thoughout the cycle he learned discipline, honor, and the Army way of life, but everything else was what came naturally. Spring turned to summer as he settled into his permanent duty station at Camp Lehigh. So close and yet so far from where he had grown up. He felt as if he was a snake that had slid out of its old skin and came out the other side something completely new, yet what he was intended to be all along. Steve Rogers didn't just become a solder. He became the perfect soldier. Through the year 1939 the brass that had discarded him gradually began to notice him again. The president had an idea. It was a crazy idea. Crazy enough to work.

"Forget it, Sir." Steve said flat out.

"What do you mean 'forget it' Private?" General Phillips almost growled at the bald headed insolence with which the polite young super soldier had turned on him.

"I didn't join the Army to dress like a clown Sir. I joined the Army to fight Facism, and it doesn't look like much of that is happening around here Sir."

"It is only a matter of time, Private Rogers. Right now we need you out there fighting the spies and fifth columnists that are sabotaging our ability to make war. They have blown up a munitions plant, and they won't stop there. I am offering you a commission and the rank of Captain, and there will not be another Captain in the Army that you have to answer to. You are not an ordinary soldier..."

"Sir. No disrespect intended, but I am not exactly the enhanced human you had in mind, sir." Steve said bitterly.

They sat in silence for a moment.

"I'm going to be straight with you, son. I can take that uniform you are wearing right off your back. I can throw you in military prison until you are 80. I can make your life here on this base a living hell. I can do all this, but I won't. That boy I saw when I walked into that induction center... I know that he is still in there somewhere. He's spoiling for a fight. He wants to make a difference. This is your chance. You are not only the right man for the job, but you are the only man for it. I'll give you until tomarrow to make your decision. When you make it, tell your Sergeant that its time for you to come see me." General Phillips stood up, and Steve sprung to his feet at the same time.

"Make the right decision, son." the General said as he returned Steve's salute.

"I promise that I will, sir."

* * *

The only light in the room was the last, dying embers of the fire. The bottle was empty. Wanda and Steve lay side by side in a close embrace as he brought his story to a close.

"You mean that... you didn't want to be Captain America?" Wanda asked him, still holding him close.

"I had gotten the letter that day. Sara passed away on September the 1st, so suddenly that her parents couldn't believe it. Mr. Pulaski sent a sealed letter that Sara had asked him to give to me." Steve said, his eyes closing hard as the picture of the letter burned in his mind. It was the curse of the super soldier serum that his memory had been made so sharp by the chemicals they pumped into his body.

* * *

_Beloved Steve,_

_If you are reading this letter than I am gone. I know how hard you tried to stop it, but don't feel bad that you did not. We are all only human, as much as we often wish that were not true. Please do not let this sadness destroy you. You were the love of my life and I never felt about another man the way I felt for you. You were the only happy thing in my life and rest assured that my last thoughts on this world will be of you. I have made my peace with it. I hope that you can too._

_Don't be a hero, Steve. Please don't put yourself in any danger because of what happened to me. I want to live the dream that we had, even if I cannot be there. Find another woman and raise the family that you always dreamed of. I hope that you will think of me from time to time, but above all be happy. Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes it seems like there is no justice in the world, but everything is part of His plan for us on this earth._

_I love you, Steve. I miss you. I understand why you did what you did but I wish so much that you could have stayed. All that I wanted was to spend every moment possible with you. I am proud of you, and proud to have known you. You have so much beauty inside you, Steve. You have enough hope for the rest of the world. Please go on without me my love, and show the world._

_Love,_

_Sara_

_P.S... I had the time of my life._

* * *

__

"So you were respecting her wishes?" Wanda asked.

"To this day... I don't know."

"What happened to change your mind?"

"In September the Nazis invaded Poland and slaughtered Mr. Pulaski's relatives. I couldn't stand the thought of Sara's family suffering, so I stormed into General Phillips office and agreed to the plan."

"Are you... sorry that you did?"

"No. I never have regretted that decision. I've never regretted my life as Captain America, or the good that I have done. The only thing I have ever regretted was not going back for her. Not spending those last days with her. It would have been only a few months in my long life, but would have meant the world to her."

"Why have you told me all this?"

"Because you have to understand. I had a dream with Sara. It was a very simple dream, but it was gone forever. She didn't want to see me in danger but she was right about me. I wanted to build a world where nobody's dream had to die. Even if that meant giving up my dream forever."

"It is that important to you?"

"It is the only way that I can honor her memory. The only way that I can honor all of their memories."

Steve and Wanda lay there as the final embers died out in the fireplace, and she instinctively knew that his tale was done. As they lay there in the darkness she didn't know what to do or say next. She had never felt closer to him, and had never felt farther away. Her left hand was over his heart, feeling the strong beat, and her right had found its way into his left. Her cheek rested against his huge shoulder, and was close enough to his cheek to smell faint aftershave and wine on his breath. His left hand cradled and caressed the back of her head as his fingers ran through her auburn locks.

"I have been so worried about you, Steve. Even before what happened." She said as she ran her free hand over his cheek, feeling the rough beard stubble that had began to form at this late hour.

"Everybody has." he responded.

"Is what you told me tonight... all that has been bothering you?"

She felt him swallow.

"No." He said, but did not elaborate.

"I came here tonight to seduce you." She admitted.

"I know."

"How did I do?"

"Not bad. Not bad at all."

"I've always felt like a foolish little girl around you."

"What a coincidence. You've made me feel like a foolish old man."

"I dreamed about getting you in this position from the first day I met you, and right now I can't think of a single thing to do."

"Lets just stay like this for a spell. It's the best I've felt in a long while." He said as he released her hand and encircled her waist with his arm. He pulled her close and they melded together almost perfectly.

"How do you feel, Steve?" She asked before yawning and snuggling up to him.

"I feel reborn." He breathed softly in her ear.

"Why can't every night be like this, Steve?" She almost whispered, half asleep as they both drifted off.

He gently kissed her on the forehead, and felt her soft lips brush against his throat "Sometimes moments just come that you have to treasure while you can, because the moment always passes."

They fell asleep like that in each other's arms, and lay there undisturbed until they were awoken by a polite clearing of the throat by Edwin Jarvis. They had no idea that their conversation had been overheard, and in their sleep had no way of seeing the red face that hovered over them in the darkness, or the clenched yellow fist that trembled by the side of the angry synthetic man known only as the Vision. In the morning they went their separate ways to nurse their hangovers, and neither one of them noticed that the sketch of Wanda was missing.

**Next: The Perfect Soldier**

_Now we know how Steve became a super soldier, but how did a super soldier become a super hero? How will Cap get back into the swing of fighting crime when he has matters of the heart to worry about? Who is the Crimson Cowl, and what are his motivations? More to come next week, true believer!_


	8. Interlude

**Pro: Thanks for the review! Don't worry, the Vision situation will get more interesting and you should be pleased (and no, I do not plan to blow him up like they did in the real Avengers title).**

**_Dear Readers, I am so sorry that I am late on my deadline but I have been enjoying my time at home after nine months_ away_ at the war and have not given as much priority to my writing as I would have liked. I hope that you enjoy this brief cut away from the action and should have next _week's_ installment out on time. Excelsior!_**

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Interlude**

Nov 3rd 2004

The businessman got up as he got up every day, having slept a night untroubled by conscience. He slept between silk sheets, and -despite his reputation - he slept alone. He wasted little time getting ready in the morning, because time was something that he had little of in a day. He had never been a morning person; as the career that he had chosen had always made burning the midnight oil a necessity. His servants flocked to him like remora following a shark, as they had since he was a small boy. He was a man, though, and thus had given up childish things. He rarely spoke to them in anything more than terse instructions. As he showered they laid out his outfit on a dressing table so neatly that as soon as he dried off he practically walked into it. His suit cost more than most people's entire wardrobe, and his Rolex cost more than their car. His morning newspaper and his cell phone were delivered to him on a silver platter as he sat at the table waiting for his breakfast. The butler had ironed his paper to set the newsprint, so that he would not so much as smudge his fingertips with the ink.

What he saw in the paper made him smile.

As he pushed the button on his cell phone he thought of just how well things had fallen into place for him. Then again, why should he be surprised? Things always had worked out for him. He had almost always gotten what he wanted, and even when he had not that had turned out to be fore the best. Everything in life flowed to him, and even death had not conquered him. He had made contingency plans, of course, but they were now unnecessary. He could proceed with his plan on schedule without fear of any further setbacks, all complements of the American people.

"Hello." the simple yet hurried answer greeted him from the cell phone.

"Did you follow my instructions?" He asked the man on the other end just as tersely as he had spoken to his household servants.

"To the letter sir. You are positioned to make a huge killing this quarter. You will also sit on the advisory board for Raytheon, United Defense, General Dynamics, and the Cross group."

"Excellent. How are we positioned on the Stark Acquisition?"

"We are chasing them to ground. Unless they match our capital they cannot prevent the takeover."

"Excellent." The Businessman said, "I have faith that they will do just that, however. In fact, I am depending on it."

"Don't you want to complete the takeover?" The financial manager said with a hint of surprise that was surprising given the man's famous unflappability.

"Let us just say that I have my eyes on a bigger prize. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

"Bigger than Stark Industries?"

"It is bigger than anything." The businessman finished the conversation and hung up without bothering to say goodbye.

There was a whoosh of wind and the businessman sighed before pushing the button on his lacquered breakfast table and speaking into a microphone directly to the earpiece that his butler wore.

"I am not to be disturbed for a few minutes." He said with a harsh tone.

"Very good sir." The butler responded through the speaker.

He didn't even look back at his visitor, but instead unfolded his paper and turned directly to the OP/ED section.

"You better have a damn good reason for being here." He said.

"Would your rather that I show up at your office?"

"If you wore a suit and made an appointment, who would know the difference?"

"Lets just say that this is the only suit I have."

Hyperion stepped into his field of vision, both his face and his tone showing that he despised being treated like a lackey. That was precisely whythe businessmanwas doing so. There was nothing better in life than to see such a mighty creature (for he would never think of Hyperion as a man) seething in impotent rage. The superhuman was disheveled and his costume was torn. He looked as if he had flown through hell to get here.

"If I may make an observation you seem dissatisfied with our current arrangement." The businessman said, ignoring his battle-worn state.

"I just spent half an hour getting my ass handed to me by the Avengers. We barely escaped with our skins intact. If you care." Hyperion said, ignoring the observation.

"Did you succeed in freeing Spectrum and Speed Demon?"

"Yes, but that isn't the point."

"Then what is?" The businessman said with a raised eyebrow.

"I'm tired of having my ass handed to me! On my world..."

"That was not your world, and that man was not you." The businessman snarled as he threw aside his paper and exploded to his feet "Those are stolen memories of a man that you will never be!"

"You would be nothing without my power..." Hyperion said, refusing to back down.

"You are wrong on that. I'm the one that literally raised you from the ashes, and if you have a problem with that I can always return you to the Petrie dish."

"You wouldn't dare! Without my power who would keep the Syndicate toeing your line?"

"That is not your concern. Just do what you are told and you will be wealthy and powerful beyond your dreams. If you do not, I guess that it is back to the test tubes." The businessman shrugged.

They stood in silence, staring into each other's unwavering gaze. Hyperion was infuriated to be subservient to such a lesser creature, but he had no choice. Hyperion knew that it would be so easy to stare a hole right through his head, but he feared the consequences. He knew this man well, and had seen some of the contingencies that he had planned for. He knew that he would not make a threat unless he could back it up. He would have to bide his time. He was confident that his chance would come.

"I am not your lackey." Hyperion snarled.

"Of course not!" The businessman smiled as falsely as an alligator "You are my partner!"

Hyperion was unconvinced.

"The Avengers are just an inconvenience. I will see to it that they are too involved with their own problems to interfere in your criminal enterprises. In the meantime, just do what comes naturally but try to keep a low profile."

Hyperion turned toward the door and then saw the newspaper scattered across the floor. He picked up the front page and made a frustrated grunting sound from deep in his throat.

"Why do you settle for manipulating behind the scenes? With our power we could rule this world. You could be the one on the front page of this paper with all of us behind you."

"That is the mistake that was made on your double's world." The businessman said, "It did not end well. Men need to be led by other men. It gives them the illusion of control. It helps them sleep at night. It reinforces their gullibility. That is what elections are all about."

"Then what are we doing all this for?" Hyperion asked.

"I trust that you know the way out." The businessman said tersely, ending the conversation without bothering to answer the question.

As the gust of wind from Hyperion's speedy exit tumbled papers in his direction, the businessman pushed the button "Newman, you may have breakfast brought in."

The businessman that hid his face beneath a Crimson Cowl picked up the scattered paper and once again saw the headline confirming the Democratic challenger's capitulation of the presidential election. It did not matter to him so much, as he would have been a winner either way. However, he knew that a continuation of this administration's policies would bring his plans to fruition with greater alacrity.

God bless America.

* * *

It is said that when one door is slammed shut another one opens. Bernadette Rosenthal was not thinking about that as she slammed her own door behind her and collapsed into the loveseat that was the centerpiece of her apartment. She was so far beyond exhaustion that they needed to invent a new word for how she felt. She hadn't cried this much since she was a little girl and it had left her feeling silly and stupid. She wasn't alone. It seemed like better than half of New York City felt exactly the way she did. At the very least everyone at the campaign headquarters had felt that way. It was a night that had seemed to last two days, and with every passing hour more hope had been crushed until at the end she found herself wondering what country she was living in.

She dropped into an exhausted sleep fully clothed, but could not have been asleep for more than an hour or two before a firm know came at her door and forced her eyes open. It was the kind of knock that came straight out of a novel by Kafka or Orwell, a knock of absolute authority. After a knock like that you expected to open the door and see men in black uniforms and berets letting you know that a new world order had arrived and that you were among the first to win a vacation to the "reeducation" camps. She scrambled to her feet and looked to the door, pondering whether or not to open it. As she approached the door she almost trembled but at the end she looked through the peephole for less than a second before she nearly tore the door open.

Steve Rogers rocked back on his heels in surprise; eyes wide and his arm cocked back to knock again.

"Steve!" She said, throwing her arms around him. She had actually given up trying to contact him weeks ago, and tonight was the last night that she had expected to reach him. The anger and dismay that she had felt since their last meeting bled away the moment that she saw him.

"Uh... Bernie." Steve responded, retuning her hug with a little less vigor.

"Come in! Please! I know that I look like a mess but I am so glad you're here."

Bernie almost dragged him in by his arm and led him to the couch. He had not planned on coming in but felt like he was being pulled along by a riptide while surfing. There wasn't much he could do about it. In truth, he didn't even know why he came. He was still wearing his uniform under a trench coat, and was sporting bruises from the battle with the Syndicate the night before. He had seen the results of the election and somehow knew that this was where he had to be.

* * *

The Vision, despite what the news media said about him, was not a robot. He wasn't even an Android like the original Human Torch, who seemed human outside but was mechanical inside. The Vision was a synthetic man, with all the attributes of a normal man. His internal organs were made out of inorganic material, but he had them all. Everything from a GI tract to tear ducts had been included in his design. His red-faced and hairless appearance paired with his jet-black eyes to give him an inhuman appearance, but in all other ways he was anatomically correct.

In short, the Vision had a heart... and that heart was broken.

Wanda had gone out for the day, and that was for the best. After the hard fought battle against the Sinister Syndicate and their disappointing escape she had expressed the need to get away from the mansion for a while. The Wasp had provided that opportunity by suggesting a shopping trip. The Vision had encouraged her to go, but here he remained in the library. He had long lingered in the study where he had discovered them, unfolding that beautiful drawing of the woman he loved. They did not know that he knew, and they had barely spoken to one another outside of work since. Yet he saw them in a different light now. They were not avoiding one another because they lacked interest, but rather the opposite. He had not discussed any of this with either of them, but he knew somehow that it would need to be dealt with soon.

He floated through the library, looking at the books high on the shelves for the one that he had perused so often before. He was not disappointed. As many times as he had been here he had rarely seen another Avenger availing themselves of Tony Stark's enormous library. He had memorized the book, and many of its criticisms as well, but for some reason it was special to him. He liked to hold it in his hand. Paging through the languid chapters of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein (or the modern Prometheus) made him think of the confusion that he felt first coming into this world, and the journey that he undertook finding himself. He turned to the dog-eared part of the book where the scientist's creation begins his self-education (for only in the movies was the creature ever a mindless brute) and realized why he was compelled to pick up this particular work again.

One of the works that the creature discovered was Milton's "Paradise Lost."

"_Sight hateful... sight tormenting!" _The Serpent had bellowed when he saw Man and Woman in a passionate embrace in the Garden of Eden. "_Thus these two, imparadised in one another's arms, the happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill of bliss on bliss; while I to hell am thrust, where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire, Among our other torments not the least, Still unfulfilled with pain and longing pines!"_

It was so very easy to be jealous of humanity.

An hour later the Vision floated out of the library with another ancient text in tow. In all the time that he had spent amidst human beings in general and the Avengers in particular he still feared that he understood them so little. However, there was one thing that was consistent in the human experience. If you loved something, you did not let it go without a fight. In this case, conflict was inevitable. It was not logical, perhaps, but rather it was a visceral thing of emotions and flesh. He would take the conflict to the root of his suffering, and the tree of his torment would fall.

He floated into the ready room and pushed the button that would summon Captain America.

_Next: The Perfect Soldier_

_What are the nefairious plans of the Crimson Cowl? What does the Vision have up his sleeve? Why is Steve at Bernie's apartment, and what ramifications will it have? Whatdoes all this have to do with the reason why a SuperSoldier became a Super Hero? Tune in next week, true believer!_


	9. The perfect soldier

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Chapter Seven: The Perfect Soldier**

**Pro: I think that you will like what I have planned for the Vision, but you are right about a smack down being kind of uncool.**

**Authors note: for some reason the forced line breaks do not work anymore, so I am just using the word CAP centered to change a scene.**

The fight against the Sinister Syndicate had been savage, and Bernie gasped when she saw Steve take off his trench coat. His uniform was torn and tattered, streaked with blood in places, and she could never remember him coming back from a fight looking quite so bad as long as they had been together. She had been so glad to see him that she had not given any mind to the bruises which were visible on his face, or one particularly large knot on the back of his head. He sat down as she had requested and she took his coat in unfeeling fingers, some part of her brain still performing what she had intended to do before she saw that there was a twelve inch slice across Steve's chest that exposed the microscopic chain mail beneath the blue fabric. If he had been wearing a normal shirt, whatever had done that would have disemboweled him.

"Steve…" She began.

"I look like hell, don't I?" Steve laughed, but winced as his bruised ribs punished him for it "It only hurts when I laugh."

"You look about as bad as I feel." Bernie said, her eyes still feeling scratchy from all the tears she had shed the previous night.

"The Syndicate again… I don't know why we are having so much trouble bringing them in. Since they first appeared we have beaten Ultron again and defeated another of Kang's schemes. They just seem to always be a step ahead of us." Cap was thinking out loud, which was a bad habit that had always shown his frustration.

The fight had been brutal. Iron Man and Thor were by his side, along with the Wasp, Vision, and the Scarlet Witch. He had mistakenly thought that this would be enough power to stop the Syndicate. Maybe if the others had been available it would have made the difference. It had started in the city jail's hospital wing when the Syndicate attempted to spring their captured brethren. The Avengers had been sending two man teams to watch for the Jailbreak, and as luck would have it Thor and Iron Man had been on the scene at the time. By the time the remaining Avengers arrived on their Quinjet, though, the fight had gotten out of control. It had just kind of spilled into a mini-mall when Hyperion decked Thor through the building across the street. Cap had nearly been gutted by the Black Eagle, who had turned in his mace for a wickedly sharp sword. Hyperion brought down the ceiling of the food court, and if it wasn't for his shield that would have been the end of Cap. As soon as he dug himself out of the wreckage Power Princess had clobbered him with a plaster replica of a Greek style pillar that had been next to Sbarros. The image of her swinging it would be forever burned in his mind as a thing of feral beauty. He had landed right in front of Dr. Spectrum, who pinned him to a wall with what looked like a big green hand while Speed Demon did his best to get a flurry of blows through his shield.

The Avengers had their victories. It was hilarious to see the look on Golden Archer's face when his bow string broke just because Wanda pointed at it. Power Princess had made the mistake of punching the Vision while he was at maximum density and probably had a broken hand to show for it. Iron man had used his repulsor beams to tumble Black Eagle like a cat in a dryer until the winged criminal vomited on himself. Tony had used the trick on Kang the first time they fought him but hadn't really pulled it out his hat since. Thor had physically dominated Hyperion. Even so, chaos was too great and every single one of them escaped in the confusion after Hyperion detonated a natural gas line with his atomic vision. How had he known that it was there? Was he capable of seeing through solid objects?

None of that mattered. He was here now, and he knew that he had something very important to say. He just didn't quite know how to say it.

"I came to see you about that… I knew that… I mean…"

"I know." Bernie said, and she did.

Sometimes Steve could give the most eloquent speeches in the world, and at other times he was at a total loss for words. Even at these times his eyes told the story, as expressive as his words. He was always at his best when expounding on ideals, ethics, process, and good old common decency. Emotions were much more difficult for him to quantify, and to express. Bernie sat down next to him on the couch and took one of his battered hands, being ever so careful to be gentle. She looked into his eyes and hoped that hers told the story as well as his had. She had missed him, and knew that he had missed her. It had only been her well intentioned mistake that had thrust them apart, and it was a mistake that didn't matter so much anymore.

"I'm sorry that I didn't return your calls." Steve almost whispered.

"I'm sorry for so many things."

"I know that you were only doing what you thought was right. You never used our relationship to ask me to do anything, no matter what pressure others were putting on you. I should have seen that. I'm sorry for that too."

"I wish that I could explain it all." Bernie said "I've been working so hard on this, and when they asked me to… you know… it wasn't any different than what happens all the time in Washington DC. It wasn't until that day in the Deli that I realized how wrong I was about that. I was planning to take advantage of you, but I couldn't go through with it. I was ashamed and tried to hide it, but it came out anyway."

Steve let go of her hand and stood up, slightly limping as he walked to her picture window. He had not fully recovered from the injuries that put him in the hospital, and the beating that he had taken tonight had not helped matters. He saw a glint of light from the windowsill and picked up what looked like an expensive diamond ring. It looked like she had tried to throw it out of the window, forgetting that she lived in a skyscraper and the windows didn't open. The last time that he had seen it, it was on her finger.

"I see that things didn't work out with your fiancé." Steve said evenly.

"You… knew that I was engaged?" Bernie had gone to great lengths to hide that fact too.

"Attention to detail." He explained as he held up the ring.

"I… well… it was a mistake… and…" Now she was the one that was stumbling.

"Was it because of me?" Steve asked with a hint of guilt.

"No… yes… I don't know." Bernie got up and literally threw one of her throw pillows.

"You don't owe me an explanation. You don't owe me anything." Steve insured her, gently putting the ring down on the windowsill.

"I feel like a heel because you were finally being so honest with me and I was lying to you." Bernie felt like crying, but it was as if her well of tears was empty.

"There is so much that I want to say, but I don't know where to begin." Steve said. "None of what happened before matters to me."

"Are… you sure?"

"Yes." Steve said, offering her his hand like a gentleman asking for a dance.

They stood hand in hand in front of the window, looking out into a New York early morning. Even this far off the street they could hear the noise of the hustle and bustle. Life went on in New York even through terrorist attacks, giant robot attacks, demonic infestations and disappointing elections.

"It is a nice view." Steve said "It reminds me of the rooftop."

"Which rooftop?" she asked

"I thought that I told you about that…"

"About what?"

"The rooftop… when you visited me in the hospital."

"Steve… I tried to visit you but they wouldn't let me in. There were just too many people claiming to know you so they had to sequester your ward."

Steve was paralyzed with confusion for a moment, searching back in his memories of telling Bernie his story in that dark room. Memory was, for him, a curse. He did not forget easily, or sometimes at all. He knew that he had suffered a concussion, but he could not factor in hallucination or dreaming for what he remembered. It was so real. She had to have been there. Then the moment passed and he shook it off. None of that mattered. He would tell the story again if he had to. In the next hour they talked of many things regarding mistakes and forgiveness, but as always he came back to his story. He wanted to be completely honest with her because it had taken him so long to realize that she was what he wanted all along.

**CAP**

February 1940

It was the moment that he realized that this was what he wanted all along.

Total chaos reigned. Shouting men, overturning tables, chattering machine gun fire, and the satisfying sound of the bullets zinging off of the triangular titanium shield that he had first held in his hands mere hours ago. Mere minutes ago he had been afraid, and embarrassed about being afraid, but just as soon as that first bullet sped by his head that was all out the window. He was in the thick of it, punching, kicking, ducking, running, and sailing through the air with impossible acrobatic leaps. He had seen the faces of his enemies cycle through laughter, anger, rage, frustration, and finally fear in a matter of moments. He could not express how satisfying it was to wipe the smiles off their faces. This group of fifth columnists were the first to see Captain America in action, and they would never forget it as long as they lived.

He had only been in a few fights in his life, and had frankly gotten the worst of them more often than not. It was only that night in 1940, surrounded by Nazi sympathizers in a fake Elk lodge that they used as a headquarters, that he realized his true purpose. His heart hammered and adrenaline surged, and were someone to look into those wide blue eyes they would see the intense glare that Michelangelo immortalized on his David. The glare of a man who has finally, at long last, seen the enemy he was created to battle. As many photographs had been taken of that statue, there were rarely any that shot directly into those eyes. For it was hard to stare into the eyes of men like Alexander, Hannibal or Charlemagne. Hard to stare into the eyes of a man who was born for battle, and for that alone.

You can take a man and train him all day and all night. You can put him in a uniform and tell him that he is a soldier. But until that first round careens past his head, until that first smell of death's fetid breath on the back of his neck, he will not understand it. That first bite of fear is like a vampire bite, but strangely it seems to flood blood into you rather than taking it from you. In moments you have forgotten that you were supposed to be afraid and are thinking only about what you were trained to do. That moment came when that first .38 slug glanced off of Steve's shield, and he charged forward into the hail of gunfire. In the moments since they had scattered like duckpins. Those that had been unarmed tried to subdue him by dog piling him under their weight (frustrating those with firearms) but after a moment their little molehill of bodies had erupted like a volcano with a star spangled explosion bursting through the top.

Then the chair had hit him in the back of the head.

"He's out cold." A cold voice haunted him as he slid toward unconsciousness like a fat kid on a greased sled "Now lets get down to business."

**CAP**

One month earlier

The bus from Fort Benning popped open its folding door and the newly minted officers poured out. They had been through 14 weeks of the Officer Candidate School, where they had learned how to lead soldiers. They had learned to read maps, march formations over huge distances, work hard without proper sleep, resist interrogators, and do all these things as a gentleman. As Steve looked to the gold bar on his collar, which would soon be replaced with two silver ones, he could not help but think of his father. When he had put on this uniform and rank there had been a war waiting. For Steve, he was the one waiting for a war. The blind fools in the capitol building still had their heads in the sand even though Nazi boots were on the cobblestone road to Paris. Even though the Japanese were in position to attack the Philippines. Even though Great Britain was screaming at the top of its lungs for help like Faye Wray in King Kong's grasp. This was why he had objected to the plan in the first place, and nothing had changed since he took his vacation in Fort Benning.

Camp Leleigh was cold. The parade ground was empty of formations as pragmatic NCOs found reasons to keep their soldier's inside the barracks and headquarters buildings. In his mind, he could picture them all in their hands and knees scrubbing every inch of the floors clean with toothbrushes. Georgia had not been nearly as cold, although at times it has seemed so. On Christmas day their instructors had marched them through the snow for hours and made them sing "I wish you a merry Christmas." the entire time. Singing wastes body heat, and more than one man dropped from hypothermia. OCS was a weeding out process, and yet to him it did not seem so difficult. It was, in fact, a cake walk. Ever since he had drank that bubbling elixir and let the vita rays soak through his body it seemed like he fit into the Army like a hand fit into a glove. It was as if he had been custom made to be a soldier. It many ways, he had.

As soon as they got out of the bus the other officers spread to the four winds. Some went to check in to their new billets while others headed to the officer's club to have their first drink as an officer. Still others ran to the nearby parking lot, where their families had been waiting in the cold for who knows how long for them. This left Steve standing alone in the snow as the bus pulled away. From above he must have looked like a tiny speck in a sea of white, and he felt that alone. It was like that first day at Fort Drumm, toeing that chalk line after everybody else had gone into the building to in-process and wondering if he was going to have to walk home. He didn't want to go to the officers club because he did not drink and the other candidates had despised him deeply. He knew that he was not going to get any Christmas cards from that crowd. They had been through hell with their back broke while he had whistled through the entire experience, and nothing reminds a man more of his shortcomings than the insinuation that what is difficult for you is a piece of cake for the guy next to you. He was less interested in going to the billets, which could tactfully be described as austere (as opposed to the enlisted quarters, which were as bad as you could imagine from watching any Army film). As for his family…

He was surprised to hear a honking car horn (in those days they sounded kinda like OW-OOOGAH) and a women waving at him. He began walking in that direction, and to his surprise he found that it was his mother beckoning to him. He had been writing her letters ever since Fort Drumm, but she had never written back. He was convinced that she would never want to talk to him again because of the way that they had ended things. She was driving a new Packard, it looked like, and he had to stifle his urge to run at her full tilt. He was convinced that if he did she would melt away like a mirage in front of a man in the desert. As he drew closer she seemed to say "to hell with it" and jogged toward him to take him in her arms. She seemed so much smaller, as if the shrinking trick that she had used to escape her husband's rages had not stopped with his death. Then he realized that it was only because he had gotten so much bigger.

"Oh! I almost didn't recognize you!" She cried "You've gotten so big! Your father never got so big! I would never forget your eyes, though, Stevie. You have your Father's eyes."

Steve bit his lip, trying to fight back the tears that she was letting flow.

"I'm so sorry for everything I said. I was just so afraid."

"Mama…"

"I understand if you don't want to see me but…"

"Mama…"

"I waited so long to see you…"

"Mama…"

"Stevie?"

"Its cold out here. Do you want to go indoors?"

She started laughing "Oh, yes, Stevie… I've been freezing my tush off."

**CAP**

"Who is this lovely young lady, Rogers?" General Phillips asked.

Steven had ordered a nice dinner for his Mother at the Officer's club's dining room when the General had walked in. He had been alerted by the guard 'o the portal calling the officers to Attention. He was unsurprised when the General walked straight up to his table. He had found that there was very little going on at Fort Leleigh that General Phillips did not know about. Steve stood at a modified position of attention to formally introduce his mother.

"General, this is my mother Margaret Rogers."

The General took her hand but didn't kiss it in the continental manner "It is wonderful to finally meet the mother of my finest soldier. You must have been tough on him as a child."

"Oh, that was his father's job." She said wistfully, as if it pained her to think about, then added as an afterthought "It is nice to meet you."

"Have a seat, Lieutenant Rogers. Would you object to my dining with you tonight?"

"No sir." Steve said right away, although he would have preferred to have dinner alone with his mother. They had been clearing the air about many things. Having dinner with the General was an honor, however, and he had come to appreciate honor in his short time in the Army.

"Is my Steven really your finest soldier, or are you just saying that?" She asked at the General sat down, his West Point ring gleaming in the lamplight.

"Do you think that I have dinner with every Buck Lieutenant fresh out of OCS? I'm the one who sent him there. He is a model soldier. A perfect soldier. The best soldier that I have seen in all my years." The General said these words with the utmost sincerity, embarrassing Steve with the praise.

"Really?"

"I have seen a lot of soldiers in my career. When I was a lieutenant I was with the Engineers while we were building the Panama Canal. They were the greatest group that I ever served with, and not one of them holds a candle to your son."

"Oh my! I thought that he would have trouble! You know that he was rejected once…"

"Yes, ma'am. I gave him a second chance because I knew how far a man's heart could carry him. You son didn't have big muscles, but he had a big heart. Now look at him."

"I can hardly believe it…"

Steve just let them chatter. Somehow he felt that the less he said the better. His mother had not asked one question about how he had acquired his new physique even though he had not been allowed to tell her, or anyone, about the experiment. She must have thought that it was simply the result of military training and a late growth spurt. He was still a teenager, after all, even though like many of his generation he was forced to grow up in a hurry. It was not outside the realm of extreme possibility. He just wondered what part the General had to play in this little drama. Ever since the death of Dr Erskrine and the departure of the War Department scientists and bureaucrats, General Phillips had been the only confidant whom he could share his secret. At first it had been a burden and he had wanted to tell everyone, but as the months had gone by it had gone the way of every secret. The pleasure of revelation was far from mind, and the fear of discovery far too near.

"I gather that you were not pleased by his decision to join the Armed Forces?"

"To be honest… I don't know… it just seems so dangerous. I suppose I was just afraid."

Margaret Rogers was ever a polite woman and did not want to embarrass her son and his commanding officer by telling him how she really felt. Did not want to let them know how hard she had worked to make sure that the gentle boy that God had given her could stay gentle. That, like her husband, she had come to hate the military as a destroyer of life and a crusher of families that preyed on the poor and the uninformed. A club of stupid, mindless brutes that were the antithesis of what she wanted her boy to become. A club that took the dreams of the patriots and left them crushed, bitter cynics that had seen and done too much to ever live a normal life. For a decade after the first war she had held her husband when he cried himself to sleep, and in the middle of the night heard him mutter the names of men he had loved like brothers. Men who he could never love again, because they were now fertilizing the soil of French vineyards. Vineyards belonging to Frenchmen that were about to come under the boot of German oppression regardless of their nearly forgotten sacrifice. It was all so pointless and so horrible that she couldn't bear it, but neither could she believe that this ribbon-covered war horse would understand.

It went to show how little she knew about General Wade Phillips. She would have been surprised to learn that Phillips was a South Dakota farm boy who had lied, cheated, stolen, and bluffed his way into West Point. That the local congressman had nominated him based solely on the fact that he had beaten the stuffing out of the biggest bully in the county. That he had endured the beatings and torments of the smooth handed Ivy Leaguers that had gone on to comfy staff positions while he had taken a hellish route to his star. Not only Panama but Mexico, France, the Philippines, and a long layover in a forgotten post in the Arizona desert that would one day be Fort Huachuca. Unlike Jack Rogers he had not left after the war not because he learned to love war, but because he was afraid to leave. Jack Rogers had his writing and his dreams, but Phillips only had his two scarred up hands and his men. Without them he had nothing. Not even a demotion from Major to 1st Lieutenant after the war could convince him to leave his men. He hung in there through fire of war and the malaise of peace. He had his own idea of what the Army was all about, and his men were the first thing on his mind.

"You don't have to worry about your son, Mrs. Rogers. This is an Adjutant General Post and he is one of my staff officers. He will face nothing more dangerous than a paper cut or two. Besides, you and I both know that the guys in the capital building aren't going to let us get involved in the fracas over in Europe."

Steve hung his head in shame at what the General had just told his mother.

"Oh, Steve." His mother chided him "Don't give us that hang dog look. You don't have anything to be embarrassed about. Your father and I didn't raise you think that you had to be some kind of… tough guy to be a man. I'm so very proud of you."

She didn't realize, even though she could read his body language so well, that he wasn't ashamed because of that. He was ashamed because it was such a monumental lie.

**CAP**

"You and your mother reconciled after all." Bernie said with a smile "I'm glad. I wish that things were as easy with my mother."

"Nothing about family is ever easy, but I think that General Phillips understood that. That is why he interrupted at dinner that night and why he did his best to but my mother's mind at ease."

"If you don't mind me asking, how did your mother afford the new car?"

"The economy was starting to get better by 1940. Things were getting cheaper, wages were getting higher, and she had two sons in the military sending her their checks. As an officer, I was getting paid even more than Frank. It really burned his butt too. I met up with him in 1940 while he was on Shore Leave in Newport News. It was a hell of a drive, but I was glad to make it. He kept giving me these big British style salutes and saying 'aye aye sir' every time I got sharp with him. He told me that he was being transferred to the Pacific fleet that day. We… we sure had a good time that day."

Steve's eyes were pressed very tightly shut, he had always been very emotional about his brother, who had meant so much to him.

"I know that it isn't easy to talk about, but did your mother ever get remarried?"

"She never did." Steve said "Sometimes that I wish that she had gotten remarried and started another family, because she was still young. I just wasn't as easy in those days. When you were a widow with grown children, dating wasn't looked on as at all appropriate. My mother worried terribly about what others thought of her. After what happened later… I just don't know. Maybe it would have made all the difference. Maybe I would still have some family."

Bernie scooted closer to Steve on the couch and put her arms around him, feeling rough beard stubble and the scraping chain mail of his shirt. All the things that had happened in all the years since he first revealed his true identity to her, and she still could not believe that he was Captain America. The illusion was that real. When he had that mask on and that shield raised he projected an invulnerability that made him seem truly immortal. The first time she had seen him in action her heart had raced, but the first time she had seen him face an enemy it had nearly stopped. But she realized that this was the man she had fallen in love with in the first place. This genuine and good hearted guy with his old fashioned ways and his sensitive outlook on life that was so much the polar opposite of the gladiator with the star spangled shield.

She wondered if these two men would ever be able to live with each other, or if there was not enough room in Dodge City for the two of them.

**CAP**

After his mother was safely off in her new Packard, Steve and the General were left alone. He turned to the older man, who was lighting a pipe. In those days it seemed like a written rule that all Generals needed to smoke pipes.

"It will get easier, son." The General assured him.

"Sir?"

"The half-truths and bald faced whoppers. You know what I mean. When I was at war I would write over and over how everything was fine and I was on my way home soon. Every day every night even though I didn't know if there would be food, water, or even air to breathe the next day. Some days the Huns dumped so much mustard gas on us that we couldn't take off our masks long enough to get so much as a sip, and I wondered if I would have to chose between dying of thirst or having my throat slough down into my lungs. Do you think that I ever told my family about those days? No. They do their best of imagining the worst on their own. You are going to have the advantage of a secret identity, so when you are out acting the part of the fool hero they won't need to worry. They can go ahead and think that guy is somebody else's son. That gives you a tremendous advantage over the rank and file soldier."

"Yes sir."

"Yes sir as in you agree with me or yes sir you can shut up now?"

Steve just smiled and said "Yes sir."

They walked for a bit in the biting cold, as the General had offered to escort him to register for officer billets and promised him one of the least objectionable ones.

"What is the mission of the Infantry?" He quizzed him, one of the factoids that had been drilled into all the officer candidates.

"To close with an kill the enemy in close combat, sir." Steve regurgitated.

"What is the mission of the Cavalry?"

"To take and hold enemy territory and create lasting conditions for stability, sir."

"What is the mission of the air corps?"

"To attain and maintain air superiority, sir."

"What is the mission of the Adjutant General?" he finally asked.

Steve's mind drew a blank.

"They didn't teach you that one, did they?" General Phillips smiled.

"No sir."

"The mission of the Adjutant General is to organize the army and bring order to the chaos of an overweight and over weaning bureaucracy." General Phillips said "My words… not the training manual's. It is our mission to take a hay stack of recruits and find the needle. The sharp little needle that will wound the enemy the most. You are that needle, son."

Steve looked at the General and saw that he was being totally serious.

"Memorize this: The mission of Captain America is to inspire the youth of America in an effort to increase military recruitment, pride in service, and commitment to the nation. You can't win this war alone. It is not your mission to win this war all by yourself. When I rode with the Cavalry they taught me that my first responsibility was to my horse. Well, in your case, and with the special trust and confidence you have been entrusted with, your first responsibility it to those soldiers. Don't ever forget that, son."

"I won't forget, Sir. I promise you."

"You don't even have to say the word, soldier. I can see it in your face, and that word is 'but' so what is it?"

"There is no war, sir. Congress is turning a blind eye to Europe, like you said."

"Son, the only thing worse than uncertainty is certainty. Unfortunately, I am certain that will change. Just as soon as the right accountant brings the right ledger sheet to those sons of bitches they will all jump on the war wagon faster than you can say boo. One of the fancy words that I learned at the Point is 'Jingoistic.' It is kind of a complicated word that basically means that whoever you are speaking about it ornery and doesn't like anybody. Don't mind killing Japs or Krauts, but don't like Limeys or Frogs either. Another fancy word I learned is 'Bellicose.' That means that you've tipped over the ornery wagon and are spoiling for a fight. Krauts and Japs, look out when the Jingoistic become the Bellicose. I seen this all before in 1914, when you were a sparkle in your daddy's eye. They say peace when they want money, and they say war when they want more money. It is to easy to say to hell with all those bastards, but we took an oath to protect them. Bastards and all."

"Where does that leave me, sir?"

"It leaves you with a big weight on your shoulders, son. It is your responsibility to inspire these troops, because they are the ones that are going to win or lose this war. What the guys in that white building will never understand is that there is good and there is evil. We cannot afford to let evil go unchecked. I think that our President has seen the light on that one, but the rest of the old fogies are a little slower on the uptake. What is happening in Europe and Asia is an evil that we are going to find on our front porch."

**CAP**

The next day Steve's training began.

While the rest of the officer candidates were being handed over to their units where they would become staff officers and platoon leaders Steve Rogers was escorted to a building at the corner of the post that was an abandoned airplane hanger from the Great War. It was here that he would spend the next month preparing for his first mission. He would do nothing but train 18 hours a day. He had four hour sit-down classes on such subjects as espionage techniques, foreign languages, criminology theory, survival, and communications. Another four hours of his day was spend conducting physical training at a level that no normal soldier could withstand. Each of these hours he got a fresh instructor because they could not keep up with him otherwise. The other ten hours of the day were combat drills.

It was that first kick to the head that hurt the most.

Jiang was a Chinese expatriate that spoke perfect English and had hands as hard as solid rock. He insisted that before the Japanese drove him to flee his home country that he was a monk, but that in this strange land he had put those disciplines aside to teach what he had learned. It was at those rock hard hands that Steve first learned about eastern martial arts, and why Hitler wanted the Japanese on his side. It was after that first kick to the head that Master Jiang stood over him and gave his first lecture.

"The disciplines of the Japanese isles are Judo, Karate, and most importantly Kendo. There are 11 year old Japanese boys who can kill you with a stick. Remember that. Like my discipline of Kung Fu, all of these styles have their weaknesses that can be exploited by the wary combatant. I will teach you these weaknesses. I have not the years needed to teach you true mastery of kung fu, but what I can teach you will make you a dangerous man. Remember this feeling in your head. Remember your own strength. Look at my slight form. Realize what you could do to a man if you do not use what I teach you with wisdom. Remember that I do not instruct wisdom. I demand it."

Steve just nodded. He felt like he had a concussion.

He did his best to continue to write to his mother and brother, but it was difficult. After that first week, with only six hours a day to recuperate and no weekend passes like the other officers got, Steve felt like chewed bubble gum. He wanted to go back to OCS. He had gone through six sparring partners in seven days in the boxing ring. The only one lasting two days was a kid named Marciano who was too stuck on stupid to quit. His body was nonetheless a road map of bruises and contusions. The worst part was the reality that he would, in all likelihood, be training like this for years and not learn everything that they expected him to know. Some days he exceeded all expectations. Other days he severely disappointed. Most of the time his instructors were in perfect agreement: He was the quickest study they had ever taught. It was almost as if he had photographic memory and reflexes to match. It was rare that anyone had to show him something twice. After three weeks, they were afraid of him.

"Where did you find this guy?" He heard his pugnacious kickboxing instructor ask General Phillips one day when the old man had come to observe the session "Can you send him back?"

"No can do." The General said. "I'm afraid that he's one of a kind."

**CAP**

It was the night before that fateful mission that he saw the uniform for the first time.

He had a hand in designing it, of course. The first one they brought him he refused to wear because it actually had an American flag for a cape. After he found out, the General agreed that it was desecration of the flag to have it flapping against your ass all day. Another he rejected because it only had a tiny domino mask. He insisted on a cowl to better hide his identity, and they capitulated. Another design had frills on the shoulders like a west point uniform complete with a cord hanging down from the left shoulder. Steve just thought that one looked stupid, but they called him a spoil sport. If he was going to be one of those guys that the papers called a "Mystery Man" fighting crime why worry that you might look flamboyant? It was an argument that Steve didn't listen to. The only council that he took on the matter was the General, who insisted that the uniform incorporate some kind of protection.

Finally it was settled. The end result was slightly different than the uniform that we have become accustomed to, but if shown it no one would fail to recognize it for what it was. It was a simple skintight cotton coverall like the suits gymnasts wore in those days, the exception of which being that it had sleeves. It reminded Steve of really tight long johns. Over this he wore a pair of tight blue pants with a pair of red trunks pulled over them to conceal the angle of the dangle. As a shirt he wore a blue chain-mail T-shirt that was so heavy that nobody but a super soldier could have done a back flip in it. It protected most of his vital organs, though, and that was what the General was most concerned about. Lastly there was a blue cowl that covered everything above his ear. For decoration, Steve was surprised by the symbols that they chose to display so prominently. Although they toyed with the idea of putting an eagle on the forehead of the cowl, they settled for a big A, which Steve thought could mean just about anything (some of them less than complementary). The wings on the cowl seemed to allude to a sort of mythological hero, like a Roman statue of Mercury. The five pointed star on his chest could mean a great many things to a great many people. It was a Masonic symbol, a pagan symbol, the path of the planet Venus, a symbol of witchcraft, military might, whatever you wanted to read into it frankly. What everyone seemed to agree on is that it drew the eye without anyone even realizing it, and if a guy was going to shoot you it would behoove you to take it in the chain mail chest rather than anywhere else.

The last addition was a surprise. General Phillips came into the room with a triangular package in a little cart. Everybody laughed when he opened it. The shield was a triangular Norman style shield with three flares on top like a fleur de leis. The painting of three stars and seven bars made it an almost perfect match for the official seal of the Adjutant General's branch of the United States Army.

"I would be honored to carry it, Sir." Steve said sincerely "But don't you think that people will guess who I'm working for?"

"With any luck, son, they will." The General said with a smile.

**CAP**

The first thing that Steve thought about upon regaining consciousness was what an overconfident fool he had been. After a brief reconnaissance of the lodge where Military Intelligence insisted that the fifth columnists were meeting he had just charged in even though he was outnumbered 30 or 40 to one. It had been exhilarating, exciting, cathartic, and very stupid. As soon as he looked through that window and saw that swastika that they were saluting on American soil, it was like something broke in him. All those emotions that he had been pushing down in all the frustrating years since that newsreel footage in 1935 exploded. Just like he exploded through the window, gaining the element of surprise and putting them back on their heels. He was surprised to be alive, first of all, because he knew how easy it would have been to just put a bullet in his head as he lay on the ground. He knew immediately that he was tied to a chair and that he had the feeling of pins and needles in his hands. They must have tied him tightly. The first thing he saw upon opening his eyes was a sight that he would remember for the rest of his life. The sight of an enemy that would plague him again and again through the years. A sight of the utmost hatred, straight out of hell.

The leering face of the Red Skull.

"I see that you have finally regained consciousness, my costumed clown!" The Skull laughed. Despite his red skull and SS storm trooper uniform he spoke with a perfect Midwestern accent. "I thought that my blow had scrambled your brains!"

Steve held back the urge to ask "Who are YOU calling a clown?" and remained silent, trying to take in the lay of the room without looking frantic. There were still about a half dozen of the fifth columnists standing about, elbowing each other and smiling, but it seemed that most of them had put an egg on their shoe and beat it. One of them was holding his shield and hitting it with a hammer, looking surprised that he wasn't making a dent. He was in the clutches of geniuses, obviously. He could tell that he was bound to the chair with the ropes that had operated the curtains he destroyed upon his entry. This would be too easy.

"I don't know who you are… or who you think you are… but before you die you will tell me who you work for! Make no mistake clown… you will die. No one has seen the face of the Red Skull and lived to tell the tale!"

"There's a first time for everything." Cap said evenly and spring to his feet with a snapping noise. The ropes that had been holding him held fast, although they frayed and unraveled when he snapped the chair in half.

The expressions on their faces were priceless.

"Impossible!" The Skull stammered, the eyes in his hollow sockets wide with surprise "No one is strong enough to…"

Cap hurled a piece of the chair at the Red Skull with all his might, and the man was too stunned to duck. He took it directly in the face and fragments of red skull spewed in all directions like confetti. Steve found himself hoping that that had not really been his face.

They came at him immediately, not imagining that the man who was unconscious only moments before could be a threat. They were mistaken, for they had never faced a super soldier. The first two he grabbed by the front of their shirts and slammed them together in mid air. He ducked another's punch and came up with a devastating uppercut. The one who had been behind the skull took a kick to the face that cost him his two front teeth. When he saw the shadow of the final coward behind him, gun raised, he did a spectacular back-flip that had him behind the man the moment that the gun went off. As the man whirled he clutched his wrist and throat, forcing him to point the gun where it would do no damage. The man, even scared out of his wits, was no match for his strength. It was like wrestling with an eight year old. He forced the man to drop the pistol and heard a crackling sound come from his wrist. The man's eyes bulged as he lifted him off of his feet by his throat. The last remaining man was unarmed, and was charging Cap with his own shield, but his own friend hit him first as Cap hurled the man at him.

After stepping on the last goon's neck and tearing the Shield from his clutches, Cap made sure that all of his adversaries were unconscious. It was only at that moment that he realized what he had done. It had all happened so fast that he had not had enough time to think about it. He had won. Just like that. He walked up to the defeated Red Skull and saw with surprise that he had been one of the men who had been at his Rebirth. A very wealthy and important defense contractor. In a way, it all made sense. None of his plants had been sabotaged by the fifth columnists. To this day, Captain America did not know if that first clumsy adversary was motivated by belief in Nazism or simple greed. At the end of the day, it didn't really matter.

**CAP**

General Phillips was furious.

"You let three quarters of the fifth column get away and almost got your fool hide nailed to the wall!" he howled at the red-faced young man under the blue mask. "You were supposed to wait for the police and the reporters and lead the raid, not jump in like a cowboy and get yourself killed! After all the time, money, and man hours spent on your training you still don't understand that you are not a one man army! Dingbat!"

"I'm sorry, Sir, but I did capture the leader of the…"

"Yes! Arthur Manxman! One of our leading industrial engineers and our closest ally in preparing for war! You should have warned us before the papers got a hold of it! Now we have a mess on our hands!"

Steve stood at the perfect position of attention taking his ass chewing, just as he had been trained to do. Nothing that he could say to the General could make anything different. They both knew that this was his first mission and that mistakes would be made. It was then that Captain America first realized that he and the General did not see eye to eye on his role. The General wanted him to be some kind of propaganda tool, making personal appearances rather than actually putting his neck on the line, and all he wanted was to fight.

Just as quickly as he started raging, though, he abruptly stopped "I'm… sorry to holler at you like that, son. It is just… all the brass at the War Department was very pleased when they heard that you caught the Red Skull, and you did get coverage in all the right papers. The Red Skull is the Nazis foremost agent. A cold blooded killer and a truly despicable individual that they turn to when all else has failed. The problem is that we know for a fact now that Manxman is not the Red Skull.

"Sir? How do you know?" Cap asked, perhaps impertinently, but as time went on his method of addressing the General would gradually become more informal.

"Because military intelligence knows for a fact that the Red Skull is German. Manxman is as American as apple pie. That means that Manxman was duped by the Skull. He was a pawn. We thought that we had reeled in a marlin but we ended up with a guppy."

In the next week the headlines stopped being "New Hero Captain America Smashes Spy Ring." and turned into "Fifth Column Menace On Our Own Shores." The Jingoistic mood of the country continued, but Bellicosity was nowhere to be found. It was only 1940, after all, and what was happening in Europe wasn't OUR problem. Captain America had made the scene, along with mystery men like the Avenging Angel, the Destroyer, and Father Time. Would any of them make a difference? That was the question that plagued Steve as he went to bed that night. He didn't know, had no way of knowing, that outside the bubble of Camp Leleigh and its military matters there was word on the street. That his name was on every pair of lips. That there was an indefinable SOMETHING that separated him from the slightly spooky mystery men and the freakish Marvels like the Torch and Namor.

Captain America was an overnight sensation.

**CAP**

"So you see, Bernie… they never really wanted or needed me to be a crime fighter. They wanted a poster boy. Uncle Sam wasn't working for them, so they turned to something new."

"I totally understand, Steve." She said as she drank her hot chocolate. She had no idea why she had made it for them. Maybe only because it was starting to get so cold outside. He hadn't touched his.

"They pulled out all the stops. Lunch buckets, comic books, personal appearances at orphanages, the works. There has never been another time in my life that I felt like more of a fraud."

"You weren't a fraud, Steve… just a soldier following orders." Bernie said.

"That is the problem. I was young, and didn't really know what to do with the power that had been given me. So I just followed orders at first, but as time went on... My father hadn't brought me up to be an automaton like that. He had brought me up to think, reason, object, and dissent if necessary. That was what kept bringing me into conflict with the brass that were trying to handle me for their own purposes. They found out too late that I wasn't the perfect soldier after all."

Then the alarm on his Avengers ID started blaring. It wasn't the normal alert, which was a polite beeping that meant that there was a message to follow. It was the one that meant "Avengers Assemble."

"I'm sorry, Bernie I…"

"…have to go." She finished for him.

They crossed the distance between them and took each other in a firm embrace.

"As soon as I am done, whatever is going on… I'll come back to you the minute it is over. I promise you that."

She had never heard him make that promise before, and as she pulled away from the hug she shuddered as she felt beard stubble scrape her cheek and his lips press into hers. She closed her eyes and sucked in his breath, giving back some of her own, letting him know that it was ok. Letting him know without a doubt that she wanted him to come back. Even though they both knew that he needed to hurry, Steve Rogers and Bernie Rosenthal stood for several seconds and enjoyed the moment for all it was worth.

**CAP**

The Captain burst through the doors of the meeting room exactly when the Vision had calculated that he would, and there was no surprise on his face that the Vision was the only Avenger waiting in the ready room. They were so very often the first two to arrive that it was almost business as usual. Almost. The Vision was the one that knew differently. As surprising as it was to imagine, it was the all too human Captain that had turned a blind eye to the emotional aspect of things, and the inhuman Vision who had let it overwhelm him.

"What is the problem." The Captain said, always cutting to the heart of the matter. Even with his limp, in his beaten and tattered uniform he was still ready to leap into the fray.

"That is the question, isn't it?" The Vision responded.

That got Cap's attention. It was very uncommon, almost unheard of, for the Vision to answer a question with a question. He always prided himself with having answers, or at least an observation.

"What was the alert about, Vision?" Cap asked without any sense of strained patience.

"I apologize for that, Captain. I just needed to speak with you privately and knew that it was the swiftest way to summon you."

"What about the others?"

I saw to it that you were the only one summoned."

"Vision… you know that the emergency alert is only for the greatest of crisis…"

"That is the problem, Captain." The Vision said coldly "You do not realize that this is a crisis."

Cap looked at him with puzzlement. What fools human beings could be.

"I have been reading a great deal of English literature recently." The Vision explained as he floated around the table "Chaucer, Blake, Milton, Mallory, and Shelly. Books that take unflinching looks at humanity and what it means to be human. I know that it would be more efficient for me to download them directly into my memory core, but I have found the diversion or reading more pleasurable than simply the act of absorbing information."

"That is very good, Vision, but I fail to see what this has to do with…"

"You fail to see, Captain. That is the problem." The Vision said the angry words in his spooky monotone, like Hal the computer begging not to die listlessly as Dave turned the keys. Even so, Cap had known him long enough to tell his anger by his expression. Long enough to be surprised by it.

"Is there something that you need to tell me, Vision?"

"Come now, Captain. Surely you can guess. Some people call you the King Arthur of this round table." The Vision said, swinging his arm in a sweeping gesture of the Avenger's meeting table. He tossed the book that he was holding to the super soldier, who caught it with ease.

It read _Le Morte de Arthur by Sir Thomas Mallory. _It meant "The Death of Arthur."

"What I do need to ask you, Captain, is this; do you think that you are Arthur… or are you Lancelot?"

**Next: Spies and Saboteurs**

_Is this how it ends? What can Captain America do against the might of a Vision enraged? What does this have to do with how Cap met Bucky? Tune in next week, True Believer! _


	10. Spies and sabatours

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Chapter Eight: Spies and Saboteurs**

"Wanda." Cap said with perfect understanding.

"How could you do it? How could you betray me!" The Vision said, his monotone devoid of emotion yet loud enough to be considered a shout.

The synthetic man lashed out with one arm, overturning the round assembly table and causing it to roll away until it struck a nearby wall. The table could not have weighed less than a ton, and Cap was fairly sure that it had been bolted to the floor. It was the barest indication of the might that the Vision was capable of. The cracks forming under his feet showed that he was near his maximum density, and that one punch from him would pack a wallop equivalent to what the Thing or Wonder Man was capable of. Cap did not want it to escalate that far.

"Nothing happened between us…" Steve protested.

"I saw it all. I know exactly what did and did not happen." The Vision said in what seemed to be a reasonable tone, but his furious face showed a different story.

"You were spying on her." Cap said without any tone of accusation.

"She is my wife. I simply came to see how she was doing that particular evening, and she was with you."

"She… isn't your wife anymore." Steve forced himself to say.

"Does that make what you did right? Does the fact that I was forcibly reprogrammed and forced to repeat my emotional development mean that all that was between us never happened? Does that absolve you, who I trusted above all humans?"

"Vision… we didn't…"

"I know that by human standards it is easy to say that nothing happened between the two of you. You did not actually exchange bodily fluids. However, lacking fluids of that sort I have been forced to adopt different standards of intimacy. By those standards, you were intimate with Wanda that night. You shared secrets and held one another close. You kissed my wife and shared your innermost feelings. You slept with my wife. Do you deny this?"

Silence reigned as Steve's clear blue eyes met the Vision's cold black orbs.

"No." Steve said as he removed his mask.

The silence was deafening, as if neither of them knew what to say. The Vision's fury seemed to have waned in the face of the Captain's unflinching honesty, and Steve's righteous indignation at the allegations had fled with his realization of the Vision's perspective.

"You are… one of my oldest friends." The Vision finally said, so much more quietly "I have known you, quite literally, all of my life."

"I'm so sorry Vision. I have to apologize for that night. Wanda and I… we had kept our feelings from one another for so long that we did not deal with them… I don't want… damn…" Steve finally gave up. He had given speeches that inspired men in combat and made those in power tremble. He had lectured the empress of the Shi arr empire and addressed a joint session of congress. Right now, at this moment, he could not think of any words to assuage the sense of betrayal that the Vision had every right to feel.

"It is I that should be sorry." The Vision said, looking at the destruction that he had wrought "I planned this… confrontation with the intention of resolving it with violence. Now that I am face to face with you… I cannot bring myself to do that."

"You shouldn't be ashamed. It is normal to feel anger and rage in a situation… like this. It is very human."

"I am not human." The Vision insisted. "I tried to approach this logically, but my emotions overwhelmed my reason. It is inexcusable."

"Have you talked to her about this?" Steve asked.

"No."

"I know that it can't be easy, but if you don't… well… let me just say that I know a little about what happens when you keep your feelings locked up inside."

They both looked at the ruin of the meeting table, knowing that a few poorly chosen words could have resulted in so much more destruction.

"We didn't make love, Vision." Cap reiterated, hoping that the Vision could find some solace in that "We aren't in love. We just have… natural feelings for each other and I am embarrassed by what happened. I think that she is too, but I am just as guilty as you in that I have not talked about it either. I suppose I thought that if we didn't talk about it… then it would go away."

The Vision surprised Cap by uttering a monotonous expletive that inferred that he found that highly unlikely.

"Did you learn that from Hawkeye?" Cap asked, cocking his head to one side.

"The movies." The Vision explained without any of the wry amusement that Cap saw creeping into his face.

"You need to talk to Wanda about this. If you would like, I could speak with her as well…"

"That will not be necessary. Wanda is the love of my life. If I cannot speak with her frankly about this…"

Jarvis interrupted with a clearing of his throat, causing both man and synthetic man to swivel on his in surprise. The open look of puzzlement on the Vision's normally inscrutable face reflected the surprise at seeing the butler. He had implemented several subtle machinations to insure that he and the Captain would be alone in the mansion, one of which was distracting Jarvis was a chore in the surrounding estate that should have taken all day. Evidently, from the look on the butler's face, he had easily seen through the ruse.

"Sir, you have a very important call on the law enforcement channel." Jarvis said directly to Captain America, pointedly ignoring the Vision with body language that was more rigid than normal. Without waiting for a response he flashed a baleful look at the destruction of the meeting table and turned sharply on his heel to leave the room.

"I need to take this, Vision." Cap said softly, tired blue eyes meeting expressionless black pits beneath a lowered brow that showed more contrition than any words could.

"Could… you answer me one question, Captain?" The Vision asked quietly, as if afraid to be overheard.

"Yes, Vision… if it will help."

"She said that she loved you, but you never told her that you loved her."

Cap was silent at the statement, as if awaiting the question that he knew was coming. As if, somehow, he knew exactly what he would ask were he in the Vision's shoes.

"If you were not the chairman of the Avengers… if you did not feel that burden of leadership that you spoke of to Wanda… would you have told her that you love her?"

Steve was silent for a long minute, with his gloved fist over his mouth and his eyes cast down. The Vision wasn't sure if the man didn't know if he knew the answer, but not how to say it, or if he was looking for that answer in his own heart.

"Yes." Steve finally admitted, as if the admission hurt him "I would have."

As Steve limped out of the meeting room the Vision unfolded the sketch of Wanda, his telescopic vision seeing every loving stroke of the pencil and every intentionally smudged shadow. Seeing the love and admiration that this man's hands had poured onto the paper. He knew that, even were he to master the techniques and the composition, he was incapable of creating something like this. Standing there, alone next to the wreckage of the Avenger's meeting table, tears traced their way down the Avenger's red cheeks.

* * *

"Jarvis…" Cap called to the butler as he caught up to him.

"No need to worry, sir. I am a man of the utmost discretion and very little goes on in this mansion that I do not know. This situation is a small matter compared to some of the tribulations that have required my attention throughout the years."

Steve didn't know what to say. It took all of his willpower not to blush.

"Madame Wanda and the Vision have had a tumultuous relationship, but I believe that they will see in time that they were meant for one another. If they do not, it will not be your fault. You have your own decisions to make concerning two young ladies."

"Wanda is not an option… my feelings… she is an Avenger." Cap insisted as they walked, as if that explained everything.

"I was not talking about Madame Wanda, sir."

"Sharon? She is out of the picture. We came to an understanding the last time we went our separate ways. Time had just changed us too much…"

"I was not referring to Madame Carter either." Jarvis said stiffly. Cap suspected that Jarvis had long disliked Sharon. Their unspoken animosity had only gotten worse over the years since she seemed to get more rude and insensitive with age.

Cap opened his mouth and then closed it again. He could not imagine who Jarvis was talking about. Other than Bernie there had been no woman of interest in his life since… Hala. The beautiful Hala was in Atlantis, far beyond his reach by his own choosing. He could never know if what they had shared was real or an illusion brought forth by the Interrogator's brainwashing. Jarvis couldn't possibly mean Natasha, could he? Steve had worked very hard to insure that his relationship with The Black Widow was purely professional regardless of her reputation and desire. After a few rebuffs Sersi's flirtations with him had turned to a disingenuous jealousy that drove her to an affair with the Black Knight and an exit from the team. His head was spinning with the women that had made his life… interesting.

He did not give a thought to the one that Jarvis was talking about until he entered the communication's room, because it was one of the first words out of the NYPD representative's mouth.

* * *

_She had stayed out all night on election night. While Captain America was digging himself out of the rubble of a food court and Bernadette Rosenthal was watching her hope slip away state by state in the convention center, she had decided to have a good time. She had started off slow, a drink here and a drink there. By the time that she was at Coyote Ugly drinking tequila out of another woman's navel her friends started to get worried about her. They had asked her to slow down. She had snapped at them and left in a huff, starting to realize that she was having difficulty walking. She had drank down the equivalent of three fifths of Jack Daniel's by then throughout countless bar drinks ranging from Fuzzy Navels to Open Graves. It was enough to kill a woman of her build, but strangely enough she was not only holding it down but metabolizing it too quickly, getting to the hangover phase far too soon. She started asking for straight shots, but even that wasn't doing the job._

_The man that grabbed her and pulled her into the alley thought that he had the perfect victim alone in the dark, drunk and tottering on her feet. He pawed her breast and whispered something threatening into her ear as he pressed the knife into her, but she had his hand in an iron hard grip before he knew what was happening. She smashed his instep with her high heel and took his knife from him. Less than 30 seconds later a bloody mess was staggering down the alley with his hands clutched over his face; sobbing and too shocked to even call out for help. He had lost some of the fingers that had groped her defending himself from her, but she had gotten the blade up his nose nonetheless. She tried not to think of the blood curdling scream that had come from the man. Jack Nicholson hadn't screamed like that in _Chinatown.

_When she finally got back to her apartment she stripped off her bloody clothes. Hadn't anybody on the street noticed that she looked like she had just worked a 12 hour shift at the slaughterhouse? It was just another example of how invisible - how insignificant - she was. She stripped off the ruined party clothes and threw them in the garbage chute. She stood naked in front of the mirror and looked at a beautiful face and a perfect body, or what others would think were such. Like a woman who would make six figures posing for Playboy's centerfold or a six page spread for Maxim. Her drink-addled mind saw a different picture. A zit faced teenager with the smallest buds of breasts and bruises all over, smiling and happy despite the pain because she was finally in the gang… no matter what it had cost her._

_The pain had not gone away in all these years._

_There was a time when she had hope that the pain could go away. Her hope was personified by a man, though, and men could not be depended on. She should have known better. Her father left her, her brothers left her, why should he have been any different? He loved a ghost, and had loved her for over half a century. How could she compete with that? How could she compete with the woman who reminded him of that ghost of his past? How could she turn his eye from the beautiful women in tight suits who flocked around him waiting for their chance to crack the padlock that held his drawers up? All that she did, all that she gave up, and all that she professed to him had meant nothing. They had never slept together, had barely kissed, and in the end it had not been him who failed. He had stayed the same, would always be the same. It was she who had failed him, and he didn't look back._

_The pills that she pulled from her cabinet were not illegal. She had gotten them by insisting that she had problems sleeping, and that was true. She took them all and chased them down with a tall glass of Southern Comfort. With any luck, she would never have any problem sleeping again. As the drowsiness settled down on her, she threw the glass into the bathtub and winced as it shattered loudly. She drank down the rest of the Southern Comfort directly from the bottle. Slouched onto the bathroom floor, with the entire world blurring, she wondered what he would feel when they found the note. Too late she realized that she didn't want to cause him that pain. Too late she realized how rash she had been to write it. She clawed her way across the carpet, reaching for the note on the coffee table so that she could tear it up._

_She never made it._

* * *

Steve showed to the hospital in civilian clothes, but it hardly mattered. Some asshole had leaked the contents of the suicide note to the press, and the sharks were circling. The reporters saw him and their eyes spread to the size of saucers. He was reminded of pictures he had seen of former Lions halfback Barry Sanders looking for a running lane. He had to wade through a battalion of microphones and flashing cameras to get to the door of the emergency room, where he was nearly blockaded out until one of the security guards recognized him and pulled him through the doors.

"Thanks." He told the boy in blue with a smile.

"Anytime, Cap." The rent a cop laughed "Could I get an autograph?"

Steve rolled his eyes.

"Just kidding, sir." The man said with a wink.

The guard escorted him to the duty nurse who was still talking to the NYPD Detective who had called him in the first place. Steve didn't know what to say to them, and saw by their expressions that they felt the exact same way.

"How is she?" Steve finally asked the nurse.

"She is stable, but she hasn't regained consciousness yet. I think that is a good thing, because she might be angry when she finds out that we pumped her stomach. A lot of suicide attempts are cries for help and desperate grasps for attention, but in this case I don't know about that. We don't know how she will feel about being alive. With her physical strength it may be difficult, if not impossible, for us to prevent another attempt." The nurse was young and lovely for a woman of her responsibility, but she had that careworn look that reminded him of his mother.

"Can I see her?" Steve asked.

"I was hoping that you would. Maybe your presence can help diffuse…"

"Don't worry about her yet, mister. You've got bigger fish to fry. We need to talk about…" Detective Sanchez began, but stopped when Cap flashed him an icy stare that made the man's testicles retract into his body.

Sanchez was a 15 year veteran of the NYPD and had pulled a two year stint in the US Army as an Infantryman in the 1980's. He had faced many of the individuals that he called "Super Creeps" before. He had been webbed to a wall by Spider-Man when he was a rookie. His first patrol car had been thrown through a ninth story window by the Hulk. He had arrested Kyle Richmond, the crusader known as Nighthawk, when he had been nailed for tax evasion. He had questioned Dr. Stephen Strange as a "person of interest" in an occult murder investigation as soon as he made Detective. For some reason, people in the department came to him with this kind of thing. He had never met Captain America, though. The Avenger was not known for brushes with the law, even though his partner insisted that the urban myth about Cap going on a Crystal Meth induced rampage was absolute truth. The look in the man's intense blue eyes reminded him of his hard-eyed Drill Sergeants, all of whom had earned their stripes as teenagers in a place called Vietnam. Badge or no badge, he instantly knew that he could not bulldog this particular man.

Steve Rogers walked right by him.

"Wait… er… sir." Sanchez stumbled weakly, thrown way off of his game "We need to talk about the note."

"I'll answer a question if you answer a question." Steve whirled on him with a tone of steel "Otherwise, I'm going to see Rachel."

"What question?" Sanchez shrugged, doing his best Colombo impression.

"Do they send homicide Detectives to every routine overdose?"

Sanchez grimaced in consternation.

"I didn't think so." Steve said as he turned around, heading for the room that the duty nurse was indicating. As they walked together she turned around and mouthed a silent apology to the Detective.

_Go ahead. _Sanchez snarled inwardly _You don't have to cooperate, mister big shot. The note gave me all I need on her. All I wanted was your own explanation. You can swing with her for all I care._

* * *

_Dear Steve,_

_I am sorry to be writing this to you but I can't think of anyone else that would possibly understand. If you are reading this than I am gone. I know that you will be upset by this, because even though it has been so long since we have seen each other I know that you are the kindest hearted man that I have ever met and that you have compassion for even your greatest enemies. I just cannot go on knowing that you were the only man that I could ever love and that we will never be together. Your life as Captain America and my life as Diamondback were not compatible, but I can't help but wonder what could have been between a guy named Steve and a gal named Rachel. I loved you so much, and for a time I thought that you did too. Our affair was like a whirlwind and we didn't have time to breathe. From that first fight at the AIM hideout to the hunt for the Bloodstone at least we knew that we were enemies. Being friends was so much harder when we both knew that wasn't what we wanted. When we finally were about to take the leap, when I finally decided to go straight, it was one drama and trauma after another. Late at night I can still remember the scent of your aftershave and the feel of your lips against mine._

_I did my best to forget about you. I went back to doing what I always did best, which was operating outside of the law. I think that I did some good even though what I was doing was illegal. I knew that there was no hope, though, when I saw you again. At the bar that used to have no name, before you were hurt, I saw you and I knew that there was no hope of ever forgetting you. There was no hope of ever finding someone to replace you. When you were hurt I held onto you like I once held onto my own life, as if losing you would be like losing myself. That terrified me, and I don't want to feel like that anymore. I don't want to feel like I'm not good enough for you anymore. I'm so sorry that I killed Porcupine, MODOK, and Snapdragon. I'm so sorry that I didn't kill Crossbones. Most of all I'm so sorry that I ever fell for you, because I couldn't ever possibly measure up to the woman that you deserve. I don't think that you realized that you were talking to me in the hospital when you told me about Sara, but that is when I realized that I could never compete with that._

_Don't think that any of this is your fault, Steve. Every mistake In my life was my decision. Just like you made the decision to try and save Sara I made the decision to try and join Bing's Gang. I didn't know that once you were in the gang, you can never get out. I was young and didn't know that there was no way out. In a way, I guess that we are both trapped by destiny. There was no way that I could know that I would ever meet you. When I was a little girl you were supposed to be dead. You were like a bedtime story or a fairy tale that parents told their children. I regret falling for you but I never regretted that you came into my life, because you showed me the person that I wanted to be. The person I could have been. I am only sorry that I failed, and could not be that person for you. I'm going to go out, have some fun with Asp and Mamba, and then when I get back I'm going to end it all. I'm so sorry, Steve. I just want you to know that even now I love you so much it hurts. I just need to make the pain go away._

_Forgive me,_

_Rachel _

Steve looked down at the note that she had written him and fought the tears. It was a winning battle only because he was a born fighter. He had no idea that she had felt this strongly about him. He knew exactly how he had felt about her, but he had not trusted himself. He had not trusted his own judgment. She had misunderstood, and took his ambivalence to mean that he didn't trust her. Maybe it had been like that in the beginning, but she had proven herself. She earned the chance that Hawkeye, Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver had gotten. The only reason he had not given it to her was because he had been too worried about what other people would think. Been too worried that the Avengers would consider his romance with her the only reason that he was accepting her reformation. This was the result of that attitude. Rachel Leighton was in a coma, and they had no idea when she would wake up. She had a hearty constitution as a result of her exposure to his Super Soldier-enhanced blood. It was a weaker strain, though, and not nearly what his was. She had been thorough with her chemical assault on her body, and had lain on the brink of death for most of a day before she had been discovered by one of her friends.

His Avengers ID card was broken. He had crushed it in his palm after an argument with Hawkeye. The Bowman had called him almost immediately as soon as the news hit, scrambling to justify Falcon's decision to keep Rachel's role in his recovery from him. Trying to cover his ass. He had needed to leave the ICU to scream at him, people looking at the man yelling at an ID card as if he were a total nutcase. Sam had wanted to talk to him next, and maybe his old friend could have calmed him down. By then it was too late, because the Avengers ID was crushed in the palm of the Super Soldier's hand. It was a very expensive moment of anger, but he was sure that it could be replaced. Rachel couldn't be replaced.

Rachel looked so very small. So much more vulnerable than he had ever seen her. She had always been an enigma to him. The first time he met her she had wrapped her legs around his neck, and had the chance to kill him. She had gotten another chance on another occasion, but once again spared his life. He had returned the favor countless times, but never felt that the scales were balanced. Looking at her now, he knew that he had loved her… but had never found the courage to tell her so. He closed the door behind him, a nod from the sad eyed nurse telling him that it was all right. He pulled up and chair next to her, just as she had sat next to him when he had been in this state. He took her soft hand in his rough, calloused palm and gave it a firm squeeze. Then the dam burst. He found himself telling her all the things that he wished that he could have told her before. His thoughts, his feelings, his hopes, but most of all his fears. We will not be privy to these words, good reader, for there are some words that are meant to be only between two people. These words were for Steve Rogers and Rachel Leighton alone.

If only she could hear them.

* * *

March 1941

Sometimes it is tough to be the new kid on the block.

These were different times, and people had a different view of the hero that now sat beside the sickbed of a super villain. In his first year as Captain America, Steve Rogers had struck major blows against the fifth columnists. He had been breaking up spy rings all over the eastern seaboard, from Brighton Beach to Newport News. He was being discussed in hushed whispers by the German high command. For all that, he still was the new kid on the block. He found very little cooperation or respect from his contemporaries. Guys like the Avenging Angel had been gunning down gangsters for years, and publicly criticized his policy of non-lethal apprehension. It had made him a media darling, but had some well known (and much more media savvy) mystery men dismissing him as a cream puff. Someone who was incapable of doing what was necessary to protect the streets of America.

Then again, they had never been slugged by a man who could bench press a Buick.

Ironically enough, Cap found that he had two allies from his past who had no idea that they were helping out an old friend. A great deal of his popular support was due to the popular Captain America comic book that was based (loosely) on the government reports of his missions. The writer and the artist insisted on calling them "adventures" but in all reality they were just missions. He would work by day in the General's office as Captain Rogers, sometime in the afternoon he would get an operational order, and by evening he would be deploying based on the intelligence he was given. Perhaps it was this professional approach to crime fighting that so completely separated him from more footloose thrill seekers as Captain Terror. More likely it was the lively interpretations that Joe and Jack attributed to him in the course of that monthly comic. Most of those comics were only read once and thrown away, for collecting them had not been a mania of the forties, yet they would be seated in the imagination of a generation.

That first comic book, with its striking image of Captain America punching Adolph Hitler in the face, has been based in fact. In his first few months as Captain America he had gone rogue. He had been sick of always running interference against spies and saboteurs on the home front. He had wanted to badly to take the fight to the man who had started it all. So he had gone AWOL, stowed away on a liberty ship, and when that ship had been intercepted by a German patrol he had commandeered that vessel. He had been lucky that the Germans hadn't just torpedoed the thing. He had been lucky that the captain of the ship was a coward that blanched at the thought of combat against someone with the capability of fighting back. Once on land he was lucky that he looked so damn German. All that he had needed to do was punch out one SS trooper and take his uniform. By the time the tied-up crew had been discovered he was already rampaging through the German high command, coming face to face with the man himself, and punching uncle Adolph right in the kisser.

His only regret was that he hadn't been able to do more before half the _Wermarcht _was chasing him through the French countryside. If it hadn't been for a fortunate encounter with the French resistance the legend of Captain America might have ended in 1941 instead of beginning there. That was when he encountered the expatriate American Peggy Carter, who like himself refused to stand by while the country did nothing. Unlike Steve, she did not have government gifted strength and stamina, but she fought anyway. Even years later, while she was working for Jarvis as the Avengers' support staff communications officer, he marveled at her courage. She would be his link to the resistance throughout the war.

"Can't you tell me your name?" She asked him as the disgruntled British intelligence officers were smuggling him aboard a boat.

"I'm afraid I can't." Cap had told her "It's a state secret."

"Then I will simply call you _amour._" She said with a smile, although they were not yet lovers.

"Whatever you wish, _mademoiselle._" He said as he got on the ship.

Somehow, even then he knew that they would meet again.

* * *

"I'm going to wring your neck!" General Phillips yelled when he finally got Captain Rogers in his office. One of his eyes was twitching and his entire face looked like a boiled sugar beet ready to burst. "Who do you think you are! You hot headed jerk! I thought that you had screwed up every way a man could possibly screw up before this one!"

"Sir…"

"Don't sir me, Rogers! You went AWOL, invaded a sovereign nation, and caused an international incident! The German consulate has accused you of assault, vandalism, piracy, espionage, and… attempted assassination. You should hear the things that they accused you of that they CAN'T prove!"

"I just wanted to take it to the enemy, sir!" Steve growled "All that I do is chase after spies and saboteurs when we know who is really behind all the attacks!"

"Do you think that there aren't a million soldiers marching around the parade grounds every day that want to take it to those kraut bastards! But they don't because they follow ORDERS, Rogers! We barely pulled your carcass out of there alive, and we almost didn't do that because you were reported dead twice!"

"What?" Steve said breathlessly.

"The British reported you lost at sea after the incident on the liberty ship! The Germans reported you dead again after the assault on the headquarters, probably just as a propaganda tactic."

"Yes. Do you realize how hard it was for me to tell your mother?"

"You told my mother that I was…"

"What did you expect me to do!" The General seemed to be on the defensive "You were my soldier and you died under my command, if not following my damn commands!"

"Sir, you've got to let me call her…"

"I don't think that is a good idea Rogers…" The General said more softly.

"Sir? What happened?" Steve said, worry creeping into his brave voice.

"The worst, Rogers." The General sighed "The worst thing that could happen."

* * *

The last time that he had been in this graveyard had been a horrible day, and this one was no exception. The only difference was that that day he had Sara to comfort him. This day, he had no one. He stood in his Class A dress uniform covered with a brown trench coat against the pouring rain. He stood alone. He had even missed the funeral, and he wondered how Frank had felt about that. He had been reported dead on a Tuesday, and his mother had cut her wrists in the bathtub on Thursday. His identity as Captain America had not been revealed, only that he was in commission of a secret mission. She had not been prepared for the news, thinking that he was safe in a Adjutant General headquarters company.

He wondered what Frank thought of him now. He was the only family that he had left in the world, sailing with the pacific fleet. He had not answered any of his letters, but that was not unusual. What Steve wondered was if he would ever answer them again. He blamed himself for what happened. It had been his foolish pride, his fervor to act in the absence of all orders and reason, that had lead to this. The issue of Captain America Comics that had his likeness punching Hitler in the mouth was clutched in his left hand, the colors starting to run. He knew why he had come here, and he knew what he had to say.

"Nothing I can say… nothing I can do… can make this right. Nothing will bring you back." Steve told the pair of inexpensive tombstones that marked the gravesites of his parents. "All that I can promise is that I will go on. I promise that one day you can look down and be proud of what your son has done."

Steve left the comic book between the graves, hating the image even as he looked at it.

* * *

Anyone who had ever looked down the barrel of a gun knows that it is like a black eye, drawing you in.

Steve had no idea how it had gotten to this point, but he found himself looking down the barrel of his service revolver and shuddering, knowing what he had to do and feeling like a coward for not doing it.

Those damned words were still going though his head.

_That man was a coward._

It didn't matter. None of it mattered. Dressing up like a clown and chasing after mobsters and small fry spies didn't matter. They had reported Steve Rogers dead and that hadn't mattered either. It had cost his mother her life, but otherwise the world had still gone on without him. The politicians still played their games. The businessmen still made money selling to the German and Japanese, and America still prospered without him while the rest of the world burned. Life had suddenly become more of a burden than even a super soldier could lift, and the weight of despair drove him down to that black eye at the end of the gun barrel. All he had to do was pull the trigger. All that he had to do was apply less than a foot pound of force with his index finger. Then it was all over. Then he could see them all again. The sweat poured down his face.

_Stick it in your mouth. _The dark voice said _pull the trigger and splatter your super soldier brains all over the wall. You won't feel a thing. You won't even hear it go off. Just one little trigger pull and a nose dive into the darkness. We're all waiting for you down here… come on in…_

"Steve!" The voice shook him out of his fatally locked gaze with the barrel.

Standing in the doorway, his mouth working like a fish out of water, was James Buchanan Barnes. The camp mascot, too young to have gotten into the army but big enough for his age to have fooled the induction officers. All of the soldiers around him called him squirt, but he had his own nickname for him, which he only used when they were alone.

"Bucky…" Steve said, and only then realize that he was wearing his full Captain America uniform… except for the mask.

* * *

"So you see, Rachel?" Steve asked quietly "Nobody is perfect. Nobody is too good for someone else. Nobody can get through without a little help from their friends. Life is too hard for that."

She didn't respond.

Captain America got up and walked to the window, looking out to the New York night. He looked back to the woman laying comatose and looked back to the lights that still burned at this late hour. He had failed to help Rachel. He had failed to even recognize that there was a problem. There were so many lights out there. How many out there couldn't sleep, tormented by the demons of their lives? How many saw the ghosts of those they loved whenever they closed their eyes? How many felt that all hope in their life had fled? How many felt that there was nothing left to live for? How many, this night, would he fail to help?

The night provided no answers.

She hated the media.

_On the heels of the election scandal Captain America is accused…_

She hated the hypocrites.

_…the suicide note was found by investigators…_

She hated the lies.

_…confessing to more than three murders in high profile unsolved cases…_

She hated the sensationalism.

_…the nature of their sexual relationship remains undisclosed…_

She hated the rationalization.

_…is not known how a persona imbued with such a degree of public trust could engage in a clandestine sexual relationship with a well known costumed criminal that has been linked with the Serpent Society and the terrorist murderer known as Crossbones…_

She hated the arrogance.

_The American public deserves an explanation from this man who would wear our flag and represent us on the world stage…_

She hated the cowardice.

_Captain America was sighted entering the emergency room but had no comment for…_

Most of all, Bernie Rosenthal hated Rachel Leighton. She had thought that the worst night of her life could not possibly be followed by the worst day of her life, but she was mistaken. She had thought that something good had come out of it. She had dared to hope that her reconciliation with Steve had finally begun. That eggplant-haired whore had managed to ruin that. She had tried the most desperate of ploys to take Steve away from her, and she had somehow succeeded in smearing his reputation even more. She hated the bitch with a passion that frightened her, and she felt like she wanted to kill her with her bare hands. That was, of course, if her suicide attempt had not done the job first.

She threw on her clothes and grabbed her briefcase. She had to go to the office sometime, and this was as good a time as any.

* * *

Cap stood on the roof of the hospital and looked out over the legion of TV vans waiting to pounce the moment that he came out of the hospital. There had been no improvement in Rachel's condition as the sun retreated below the horizon, and there was no guarantee that she would make it through the night. The doctors had said the same thing about him, but he had a suspicious feeling that there would be no Angel winging in to rescue her from certain death. Rachel was on her own, and whether she lived or died was up to her. He had talked to her for most of the evening, but had no idea if she could hear him. He didn't even know if it would make any difference if she had. In the end, everything he said to her were just words. He had every opportunity to let her know how he felt though his actions. It was there that he had failed. Failed again just like he had failed Sara. Losing sight of what was important, and for what? For a sick need to be a hero?

"No man looks down for that long without thinking about jumping." The gruff Hell's Kitchen accent came from behind him, and for a moment he thought that it was Nick.

Steve instantly whirled on his heel, though, and saw that it was the last person that he had expected. It was a good thing, because if it had been Nick Fury the old warhorse had a kick in the face coming to him. That would have to wait for another day. Instead of one blind eye, two stared blindly at him. He should have known that there was only one man who could sneak up on him, no matter how distracted he was. His own face stared back at him from a pair of mirrored shades worn by a red haired Irishman with a white cane, smiling at him wryly in that superior smirk that they must teach at Columbia law school. A combination of cocky overconfidence and charismatic self-effacing humor. The kind of toothless smile that could melt a jury's heart.

"Murdock." Cap said.

"Rogers." Matt said with a little nod.

"I was just scouting out the enemy… I mean the reporters."

"I think you had it right the first time."

"I thought that you decided that it would be best if we didn't meet in public, counselor." Steve said.

"I'd been meaning to talk to you about that. I was… too absorbed in my own problems then. I've accepted things a little more since that day. Took my problems head on rather than ignoring them and hoping that they would just go away." The blind man said.

"I hate to break it to you, councilor, but Hell's Kitchen is that way." Steve insisted with at jerk of his thumb. "What brings the Man Without Fear this far from his territory?"

"You know that they call it Clinton these days…" Matt Murdock said with that same smirk that said everything and nothing.

"It will always be the Kitchen to me." Steve said softly, again aware of how out of touch he was with the modern times he found himself in.

"Believe it or not, I am here on the behalf of a professional colleague." Matt Murdock said after a slight clearing of his throat. "I'm here to help."

"You have enough problems of your own, counselor. Your help is not needed here." Steve said firmly, but trying not to sound as harsh as the words had to be. Matt Murdock was a good man, but he was not and would never be an Avenger. This was a family matter, and he didn't know if he could trust his family.

"I know that after my identity was… outed… you didn't understand why I didn't come to you for help. When we met in the park and when you asked me why I didn't give you a satisfactory answer. Let's just say that I had my reasons."

"Just like I have my reasons now." Cap said, turning his back on the blind man and walking back toward the roof's exit.

"Bernie doesn't agree with your reasons." Matt said, stopping Steve dead in his tracks.

The living legend turned back to the vigilante lawyer known as Daredevil, knowing that he could probably tell how angry that comment had just made him even though he was unable to see the fury in his eyes. Bernie was a part of Steve Roger's life. Daredevil was part of Captain America's life. He did not want them in any way associated with each other, because that was when disaster struck. Just when he had felt Steve finally coming out, Captain America pulled him back in.

"She is worried about you. They all are worried about you, to tell the truth, but at least she knows what to do about it."

"What would that be?" Cap asked, feeling the anger rise in his chest.

"I thought that would be obvious to you." Matt said. "We fight back."

"Why are you using the royal WE, counselor?"

"I'm not. I'm using the literal we. You tried to tell me months ago that the two of us were in the same boat, but I didn't listen. We are in this together, but I didn't realize it until just the other night."

"What are you talking about?" Steve asked.

"Do you think that it is a coincidence that you and I have both been having such difficulties? Our identities come out at around the same time, the media keeps getting fed more information to smear us with. Our enemies seem to know what we are doing before we do. We receive high profile defeat after high profile defeat…"

"It is a coincidence…"

"I don't believe in coincidences." Daredevil said without reservation. "This is a private war. A war against you and me. We've been losing."

"How did you come to this ridiculous conclusion?" Cap huffed.

"I didn't. Bernadette Rosenthal did, and I agreed with her because my sources on the street are saying the same thing. When I took down the Kingpin of crime it left a vacuum of power, but it didn't waste any time getting filled. There is a new kingpin on the streets, and those in the know call him the Crimson Cowl. He has made it his mission in life to make sure our lives are as miserable as possible, and it is remarkable how much he has succeeded in this."

"I already know about the Cowl. I met him face to face."

"He prefers to fight his war on us from afar. Face to face isn't the way he plays it, so you must have gotten really close to his operation that time. Did something that he didn't expect."

"That isn't anything that you have to worry about. The Avengers will handle the Crimson Cowl. Its what we do."

"That's the problem… one of the Avengers is a spy." Matt said without any doubt.

Steve almost growled.

"How else do you think the Syndicate has been keeping one step ahead of you? Slipping out of your grasp again and again? The same thing has been happening to me in Hell's Kitchen, and every damn time the media is there off of an anonymous tip. No one outside of the Avengers is privy to your operations, so one of them is the one that is feeding the Cowl his information. I know that you don't want to believe it, and that Bernie didn't want to tell you, but someone is out to discredit and destroy you. They are using the Avengers as the weapon to do that just as much as they are using the Syndicate."

"Who?" Was all Steve asked "Who is the traitor?"

"I don't know." Daredevil said awkwardly "I could find out in a minute if I could question them, but I know that none of the Avengers will stand for that. Even if they don't know what I am doing. Even worse, it could tip off the Cowl that we are on to him."

"How could that be worse?"

"He could decide that a better way to strike at you would be though the ones you love." Matt said earnestly "I know that from experience."

"What about the ones you love?"

"You know what they say: A man without love is a man without fear." Matt said, somewhat sadly. He had isolated himself from everyone that he had ever cared for, and now lived in a bubble of his own making. Refusing human contact. Refusing human comfort. Captain America would have understood perfectly. "He would try to have me killed. With the power at his fingertips, he might succeed."

"This is crazy." Steve muttered.

"That doesn't mean that it isn't true." Matt countered "I'm not going to press you on it. I've let you know what you need to know. I'm the only one that you can trust. When you are ready to work with me, you know where to find me." Matt said, walking toward the exit with a tap tapping of his cane. Steve wondered if he really had to do it or if it was simply force of habit.

He stopped, though, and turned.

"I tried to help you once before, you know. After we fought Hydra together. I noticed that you were acting strangely, and when I tried to help you I got my ass kicked for the trouble. I tried to help you and you beat me like a drum. They told me afterward that you were under the influence of drugs. It didn't make it all right to me. I've taken some beatings in my life. They come with the territory, but none of them were as… embarrassing. That's why I didn't come to ask for your help when I needed it. That little sting of pride."

Matt Murdock left Steve Rogers alone on the roof, feeling that little sting of pride.

* * *

Steve Rogers slipped out of the hospital under the cover of night, and somehow slipped though the net of the ambushing reporters. The interest in his story seemed to have waned in the face of endless Monday morning quarterbacking of the election. Still, there were still a few reporters waiting to pounce if he got careless. They did not seem to understand that they were dealing with a man who had slipped through German lines in France during the winter of 1943. He walked down the street with a horde of New Yorkers in a city that never slept. They paid so little attention that Tom Cruise or George W Bush could have been walking with him and nobody would have noticed. It was one of the things that he had always loved about New York. He walked for a very long time that night, just as he did the night he broke up from Sara. He walked with the same limp, and he felt the same chill in the air. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

Everybody in the world seemed to have spent the last 60 years thinking that Captain America could do no wrong, and the last 60 days thinking that he could do nothing right. Neither supposition was correct, but how could he tell somebody that? He had made so many mistakes over the years, and the way that he had treated Rachel was just one example of that. His failure to realize that something was amiss in the situation between the Avengers and the Syndicate was another. Finally, the way that he had been behaving to all those he cared about. He had been self absorbed, obsessed with the pain that was digging its way out of his buried past. He was not paying enough attention to the present, and things were falling apart all around him. The strife of the election was no excuse. His turbulent relationship with Bernie was no excuse. What had happened on 9/11 2001 was no excuse.

There was no excuse.

He took a deep breath as he stood in front of the brownstone, looking the past right in the face. This was where it had all started for him and Bernie. First as neighbors, then as friends, and finally as lovers. There was another reason that he was here. A reason that he had never told anyone. This brownstone in this respectable neighborhood had been built on the ruins of another building, and that tenement was where Steve Rogers had grown up. How could he have lived here for so long and not acknowledged that? How could he have lived and loved with Bernie without ever letting her know that important part of who Steve Rogers was? How could he have lived there so long, in so much contentment, when even now he could close his eyes and hear the ghosts. Hear the crack of a stick against leather. Hear his mother humming a George Archibald tune while she washed the dishes. Hear the clack of a typewriter in the study. This had been a part of him that he threw dirt on and hoped would suffocate.

The past had a way of digging itself out of the graves we dug for it.

* * *

Seeing Steve Rogers through the peephole made Bernie breathe a sigh of relief. He was the only human being in the world that she wanted to see. She almost tore open the door and threw herself at him. She hugged him with all of her might, buried her face in his chest, tried to think of something to say. She had not believed that he would come back, especially after hearing what had happened in the news. When his arms wrapped about her she realized that she didn't need to say anything. That there was plenty of time later for words. This was a time for something else. This was a time to pick up where they left off. She pulled him into the room and slammed the door behind her. She tore into him, and he only said one word before her lips silenced him..

"Bernie…"

"Shut up." She muffled before she bit his lower lip.

She wouldn't hear any of it, she wouldn't give him any time to second guess it. They had done this a hundred times, and even though it had been years since those times nothing had been forgotten. She was not a strong woman, but she was strong enough to break his buttons as she pulled his shirt open. She was not a tall woman, but she was tall enough to reach those soft lips surrounded by a rough beard. She pushed his much larger body back, and he was chop blocked by the sofa; tumbling back over it like a clumsy schoolboy. His laughter rang as his feet kicked in the air. Bernie ripped open her own shirt and threw it before she dove over the sofa, hoping that he would not notice the years of gravity had forced her to give up the braless look and instead opt for the industrial strength under wire Brassiere.

In the hours that passed it was like it had never ended at all. It was as if they still wore those engagement rings on their fingers. As if they were still arguing over the color of the wedding dress. As if those invitations were just waiting for a date. In and out. Up and down. Kissing lips. Moist breath. Caressing tongues dancing around each other, around other regions. Two shadows blocking the light from the window, casting a single writhing silhouette against the white stucco wall like a movie screen. Perfume and aftershave running together in the droplets of sweat running down their necks. Their chests were pressed together so tightly that her breasts hurt from the pressure, sensitive nipples like bullets against his muscles. She could feel their heartbeats thudding a beat together like the 1812 overture. Her fingernails left seven red lines across his back like the American flag.

He picked up her naked, panting form, carrying her to bed if only for the sense of propriety. Steve had always been so phenomenal at this, so unyielding and yet so uncontrolled once she punched through that wall of old fashioned reserve and dignity. His hands were so strong and they clutched hers and pushed them down into the mattress, and she let herself be conquered. Just as she had conquered him. They had conquered each other. Barriers that they had spent years building between them falling like the walls of Jericho. Passion, respect, love, heat, admiration, lust, and pride all spilling like a river of salt water through a valley of parched chaparral. There was no trouble, no pain, nothing that they felt that they couldn't overcome. At that singular moment at time they had each other. They were each other, and no one else mattered.

**Next: Live in Infamy**

**_Can Cap and Daredevil hope to stand against the forces arrayed against them? Who is the traitor within the Avengers, and can Cap trust any of them? What is the secret of the day that changed Captain America's life forever? Tune in next week, True Believers! _**


	11. Live in infamy

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Chapter Nine: Live in Infamy**

_He stands in the ruins, choking on the dust. Once again he has gotten through it unscathed. It always seemed to be that way. No matter how many years passed or how many others passed away here he was. Here he stood, listening to the wails of human suffering. Suffering that he had once again been powerless to stop. Maybe if he had been there, instead of on that secret mission, he could have made a difference. Maybe this time. Maybe next time. There were too many maybes, and only one constant throughout. As he looked through the black smoke to the carnage that awaited him, he knew that it was too late. The only thing to do was to dig through the ruins, to save those that could be saved. So he tossed aside his shield and tore away his mask. He pulled the chain mail over his head and tore the blue and white fabric to shreds in claw like hands. The last thing that he left behind was two empty boots, standing by themselves as if waiting for a soldier to step into them. _

_Captain America had failed, and it was up to Steve Rogers to pick up the pieces._

Steve woke up in Bernie's arms, feeling that supple softness against him that felt so familiar yet somehow new. His lips pressed to her cheek, and her head turned to press her mouth to his. He felt a stirring of passion that he hadn't thought possible in the wake of the dream that had haunted him over the last year. The feeling of his hands tearing through his costume was forgotten. Instead his hands found the tangles of her hair and stoked gently down her back. She was not fully awake, so he went no further. She was not a super soldier, and her stamina had been spent. He had been an officer and would always be a gentleman, even if it had seemed that was not what she desired at this moment in time. She was the first woman he had been with since Hala. He pulled her closer as he looked at the ceiling. He had never slept as much as she did, and instead preferred to spend his quiet hours with her staring into the darkness and trying not to dwell on the past that refused to leave his memory.

It made him think of something that the Vision had told him about how he did not require sleep, yet chose to disrobe and spend the night in bed with Wanda so that she could feel the important emotional connection that the action enabled. He would spend that night going over processes, diagnostics, and subroutines to ensure optimal performance over the course of the day, all the while cuddling with Wanda as any good husband would. That thought brought him to think about the position that he had put the Vision in; that of a husband forced to fight for his wife's honor. Honor was, after all, something that Steve understood deeply yet did not seem to fit in anywhere in modern life. How had he let that happen? How could he have not considered the Vision's feelings when he fell asleep with Wanda in his arms like the Android had so many times during the course of their marriage? Was it any different than how he lay with Bernie?

Rachel.

Bernie had made him forget why he came here in the first place. Partially to apologize for the embarrassing news coverage, and partially to tell her how he really felt for Rachel Leighton. He had not anticipated her reaction to these events, and had been helpless to prevent himself from falling into the old patterns and familiar rhythms of a love interrupted by the impediments of life. She had made him forget how worn, battered, tired, and emotionally drained he had been after the battle with the Syndicate and his vigil by Rachel's side. It made him feel both guilty and confused, at odds with that certainty that he had found something here with her that he thought he had lost forever. He knew that he loved Bernie. He did not have to be psychic to know that she loved him too. What was more, he knew that they could have had a life together. Maybe it was not too late, and they could have a happy life again. Then all of the years and all the pain would not matter so much anymore. He looked at her pale, beautiful face in the dark and she looked so much like Sara.

Suddenly he felt like he couldn't breathe. He didn't feel like he was wrapped in the warmth of her love so much as he was entombed in it. He had to get out of there, and his reflexes took over. He got out of the bed and dressed with the same practiced stealth that he had used to sneak through the German lines, into the headquarters of Red Skull, and over the impassible defenses of Hydra island. Bernie didn't wake up, and didn't even stir in her sleep. Both from her exhausting two days and the marathon of lovemaking he had a suspicion that a bomb blast would not wake her. He still did not risk it, and as he left he made absolutely sure that the door closed softly. It was an early November morning and still dark as night. Bernie's apartment was off central Park, and only a few joggers were out on the streets. Not the ladies in spandex running with their dogs, either. Only the grunts. You could take the men out of the Army but not the Army out of the men. The kind of man that would go for a five mile run at 5 in the morning was not the kind of man that was afraid of muggers.

It was a short and pleasant walk to Avengers Mansion, but it was the last place that Steve wanted to go. The Wasp was deputy chairman and he was confident that Jan could take command in the event of an emergency. He was disturbed by what Daredevil had told him, and had forgotten to ask Bernie if she had indeed asked Matt for help. In the course of the night it did not seem important. Now it was the one thing that he wished that he had talked to her about. Even more than the talk about Rachel. It was too late to go back now, and going back to Avenger's mansion wasn't an option either. There was nowhere he could go. He had given up Steve Roger's apartment months ago after he had gone public. His living there had been too dangerous to the other tenets, even though they had all begged him to stay. Ironically, his being there had made them feel safer. He had left his costume and shield in his wall locker when he went to visit Rachel. It was obvious that Captain America couldn't do anything to solve this mystery, so it was up to Steve Rogers.

* * *

Years ago Doctor Henry Pym made a promise that he regretted, but did his best to honor that promise every day of his life. When his wife Maria was murdered he promised her that he would not rest until he avenged her death, and to do this he turned to the only power that he had. He did not have any mutant abilities or superhuman gifts, only his genius and an audacity that would make him a pariah among his peers. He discovered a particle that could alter the size of an object, and decoded the language of insects. These would be the weapons he would use to become Ant-man, and it was Ant-man who's offhand suggestion to Thor and Iron-man that they should team up more often led to the formation of the Avengers. In a way, the Avengers themselves were the child that he and Maria never had the opportunity to have; a product of that tearful, ill considered promise to Hank Pym's lost love.

The irony of that was not lost on Janet Van Dyne.

She looked at Hank standing silently by Rachel Leighton's bed. They had both come here hoping that Steve would return. They had so much to talk with him about. But for now it was just the two of them. Former partners, former lovers, former best friends, former husband and wife. What the hell were they now? Hank's health had been keeping him out of action, and she was so angry at him both for lying to her about the strain his powers put on him and his dogged determination to ignore the problem. He was so worried about reneging on his promise to Maria that he had lost sight of the fact that he had done so much more than he had ever promised he would. He took responsibility for things that were far outside of his control, such as this comatose woman before him.

"It is all my fault." Hank had told her on the way over "I was the one who gave Cap the total blood transfusion to purge his system of that reproducing methamphetamine when it reacted with his Super soldier serum. I was the one who thought that I had purged it of the impurities when I used it to save Rachel's life. I never considered that the mental instability that effected others exposed to the serum could manifest in Rachel after a time. My arrogance and cavalier attitude is what caused all this."

What he never stopped to consider was that maybe it was Rachel's own emotional traumas that drove her to this. Hank's "cavalier attitude" might have created Ultron, but it had also given her the powers that made her the Wasp. What he had created may have cost lives on occasion, but how many had it saved? If Hank Pym was as crummy a hero as he seemed to think he was, than how come so many others wanted to imitate him? Scott had become Ant Man, Lamar had become Giant Man, and there had even been villains who swiped his Goliath and Yellowjacket identities. Often imitated, but never duplicated. His actions had caused the end of their marriage and had disgraced him both personally and professionally. Even after all that, they had gotten back together. When they first married, he had not been in the right mind. Now that he had the opportunity to renew their vows in a state of sound mind he had declined, causing them to drift apart over the past months. They knew that they loved each other, so why wouldn't he marry her?

The answer was as simple as an old promise, never forgotten.

Janet had read Rachel's suicide letter, and there was one part that struck her right in her heart: _I don't think that you realized that you were talking to me in the hospital when you told me about Sara, but that is when I realized that I could never compete with that. _She had no idea what Rachel had meant, or who Sara was, until Wanda told her. It was then that the chill went down her spine, because Rachel had summed up in so few words exactly how she had felt about Maria all those years. Maria was a hovering ghost always frowning down on her, and there was not a thing that she could do to fight her. Neither could she hate her, though, for the knowledge of what the strength of Hank's love for her had done for the world. That was why, as she turned to leave, she was so surprised by what Hank said after she excused herself.

"You are going to see him again, aren't you?" Hank said without looking back at her.

"Yes." Jan said after a momentary pause.

"Do you love him?" Hank said without any trace of anger.

"I don't know." She said in honest confusion.

"I'll stay here until Cap shows up. Give him my best." Hank said with that same gentle, noble tone of voice that always made her forget the slaps to the face and the shouted words of anger that had caused their divorce.

"I will." She promised.

As the Wasp walked out of the hospital to her rendezvous, she pulled a tissue out of her purse and hoped that a paparazzi wasn't waiting outside to catch a picture of her with her mascara running. She tried her best to will the tears to stop, but they wouldn't. Why did life have to be like this? Why wasn't anything ever easy? It wasn't that she wanted to leave Hank behind, but there was no way that she could wait forever for him. She needed to move on some time, and it seemed like life was telling her that now was the time. Luckily there would be plenty of time to fix her make-up in the car, because she wanted to look her best for Kyle.

After all these years, who could have guessed that the Dark Defender known as Nighthawk was the one for her?

* * *

The Crimson Cowl paced in front of the assembled Syndicate like George S. Patton in front of his Tankers. He had, after all, come to think of these men as his soldiers. Even though they were nothing but thugs and hoodlums imbued with superhuman abilities, they were nonetheless the most powerful agents he had to work his will in the criminal underworld. Where stealth and guile had failed, brute force had often proven more than sufficient. Hyperion had a look on his face like he was sucking a sour lemon, and that was nothing new. Power Princess was standing entirely on the other side of the group, and it was obvious that there had been some kind of tension between them all week. His ardor for her was not quite being reciprocated, but none of that was the concern of the Cowl. Until it affected their performance, that is. Spectrum (for he never thought of the numbskull as a doctor of anything) was using his light powers to create a pornographic movie in the palm of his hand, much to the visible disgust of the Power Princess. Speed Demon was lighting up his 100th cigarette of the day. If he wasn't careful he would no longer be able to run up the stairs without losing his breath, much less at 300 mph. Black Eagle was repairing some damage to one of his wings. He was the most high minded of the Syndicate and took his job seriously. Not quite so dedicated was Golden Archer, who had far reaching criminal connections that predated his cooperation with the Syndicate. He could take them or leave them, but luckily the profits had been to his liking thus far. The red headed Canadian mutant known as Amphibian was absent from the meeting, as there was business at the docks (or rather under them) that he had been sent to take care of. One other was conspicuous by his absence as well, but that was to be expected.

"We have done very well this quarter." The Cowl said as he came to a stop before them "We have consolidated our business interests in all sectors, and have a controlling interest in all of the major criminal rackets throughout the city. I will allow each of you the floor for a moment to express your most notable accomplishment."

"In the high end escort business profits have increased 25 percentand we have… eliminated one competitor." Power Princess said primly, giving little indication that she was simply a madam with superhuman strength feeding on the naiveté of beautiful young girls wishing to be models.

"In the low down dirty pimpin' business it is the same story." Dr Spectrum said with a leer under his mask. Power Princess frowned at him severely, as they had been set up as rivals from the start. He often took the girls that she had used up and squeezed every last drop out of them until they were shells of their former selves. "On top of that, the porn racket is really taking off. God bless the internet. You have no idea what people will pay to see a whore doing it with a…"

"That will be sufficient, Spectrum." The Cowl cut him off, for the benefit of them all. He was worried that Spectrum was becoming too enamored of his work. "It was an unexpected bonus that the good Captain eliminated one of your competitors while he was looking for us. I wonder if he would appreciate the irony."

"The protection rackets are falling firmly into place. We haven't had a single missed payment all quarter." Hyperion said simply, refusing to toady any more than absolutely necessary.

"Murder for hire is in decline a little bit, but it did see a big surge in business during the convention." Golden Archer admitted "Next quarter should be a big one for us."

"That is always an unstable market that depends on supply and demand." The Cowl observed "I don't take it as a bad sign. We still have a strong presence despite stiff competition from independent operators."

"Smuggling has gone through the roof." Black Eagle said with a whistle. "I foresee a 50 percentgrowth over the next quarter, too. The Patriot Act may not let you spit on the sidewalk, but it sure isn't doing a damn thing to stop the boats in the harbor."

"Narcotics are only up about 10 percent." Speed Demon said "The reach of our territory has doubled, though and I think that our profits will double over the next year if we can hang on to our territory."

"Do you doubt your ability to do this?" The Cowl asked with a curious cock of his head.

"Well…" Speed Demon said, then gritted his teeth, realizing that he misspoke.

"Perhaps Hyperion will be of some help in maintaining your territory. You can dodge bullets, but they bounce off of him." The Cowl said with a wave of his hand. Speed Demon realized that he had just been chopped down in front of his peers, and wanted to wring the Cowl's neck.

"I am pleased with all of you. You have - for the most part - evaded capture, maintained your anonymity, and thwarted the Avengers at every turn."

"Not to object, but I think that you are being too charitable on that point." Hyperion interrupted him. He had been very vocal to his fellow Syndicate members regarding what he perceived to be their failure to defeat the Avengers.

"You overlook the fact that these are Earths Mightiest Heroes that you are facing, not the Fantastic Four or that pathetic group of Mutants." The Cowl insisted, making Hyperion frown even more. His encounter with Cyclops had been a sore spot that the Cowl delighted in jabbing. "The point is not to destroy them. The public will do that for us. All that we must do is embarrass them. Plans are in motion that will leave them a shadow of their former selves, and then we may pick them off one by one… at our leisure."

"Sounds great." Golden Archer said, cracking his knuckles "Do we get to start with that purple pussed polecat?"

"Do not let your animosity with Hawkeye blind you to our ultimate objective. Time is on our side, and their time is running out."

_Just like you aren't letting Daredevil and the Captain get to you?_ Hyperion thought with distain _If anything brings our plan down, it will be your own need for vengeance._

"In addition, our recruiting efforts are bearing fruit." The Cowl said, although he had no obligation to inform the Syndicate of such things he had found that throwing them bones of information kept them from sniffing out the stores of steak that he was hiding.

"How is that?" Golden Archer mouthed off. "We all saw how good old Songbird worked out as Lady Lark."

"You're just pissed off that she didn't take you up on those "archery lessons" you offered." Black Eagle scoffed.

"Go #$# yourself bird brain!" Golden Archer growled.

"If you two are finished, may I proceed?" The Cowl said with words like knives.

"Sure." The Golden Archer muttered.

"Are you certain? Can I be in charge for a while?" The Cowl asked sarcastically, drawing dangerously close to the Archer.

"We're… fine." Black Eagle said through gritted teeth.

"If that is so, let me continue with our recruiting efforts." The Cowl said with no sense of his deep displeasure "Songbird turned out to be a double agent, which is a pity because she was perfect for the role. Perhaps in the passage of time she will come to see the error of her ways and learn why only fools are heroes. We should be prepared to greet her with open arms if this happens, and maybe she will even want to see your arrow by then, eh?"

Golden Archer's face was so tightly drawn that it seemed to be trying to disappear into his creased brow.

"Our other recruits have kept us two steps in front of the Avengers. Amphibian himself has been essential. Who thought that talking to marine creatures would be so useful a power? It is astounding what you can learn from a fish."

Power Princess was smiling, a few others seemed to be trying not to laugh, but Hyperion was not amused at all.

"I have been in contact with a young lady named Jennifer Kale, who is this world's equivalent of Arcanna. She has showed a great deal of interest in my proposition, because she has fallen on hard times and feels that she has no one who understands her."

"So you have offered your shoulder to cry on?" Hyperion said in a voice like two rocks grinding together.

"Who better?" The Cowl said, smiling in the darkness of his hood.

"Is she another do gooder?" Spectrum asked, continuing his mental masturbation with his light powers. "If she is I can always use the talent. There is a market for that sort of thing too."

"I think you would find her out of your league." Cowl said dryly. "She has been on the altruistic side of things when it has suited her, but more through an accident of fate than an inclination. None of you would have done anything differently than her were you in her position, for all reality depended upon her altruistic actions."

"Sounds like a pretty serious do gooder." Speed Demon interjected.

"But you see, there lies the irony. For all her efforts she has never been recognized as a hero at all. Other than the occasional recognition of her peers she has been largely ignored and forgotten the second a crisis is over. On occasion she has even been used and thrown away. Trust me when I say that I never interview candidates that are ill fits for their roles. Every one of them has the potential for corruption. Even Songbird is a no angel, although she likes to think that she can change. Jennifer Kale wants to be famous, but has never gotten that hearts desire. All that I need to do is convince her that if she cannot be famous… than to be infamous is second best."

"So you aim to corrupt this Jennifer Kale?" Power Princess asked for clarification.

"The process has already began." The Cowl said "If it is not successful by the time she learns more of our plans, well… then I will let you and Spectrum have her."

The assembled syndicate smiled at that.

"How much do you think we could get for a night with a super heroine?" Spectrum said with an evil smirk.

* * *

Steve Rogers walked into the reception area of Stark Enterprises and was immediately recognized by the receptionist, who couldn't catch her breath when he asked to see Anthony Stark. She was a young woman who had not even been born when he had been bashing Nazi skulls, and sometimes he felt strange when he was attracted to women young enough to be his granddaughter. He sometimes wondered if men his age that had not spent any of their lives frozen ever felt the same way. She insisted that she couldn't get him in without an appointment, but seeing who he was he could call down someone who could. Steve nodded his head and thanked her before turned to the waiting area. It had been a long and hard process that had led him here to Stark Enterprises, but he had a plan and knew that Tony was the only one who could help him. He had to gamble that he was not the traitor in the Avengers' midst, and if he was not then meeting him in neutral grounds without his armor was definitely the way to go.

The executive that came down to meet him was absolutely gobsmacked when he saw the living legend of WWII patiently waiting in the reception area reading a copy of _Cosmopolitan_ with a frown on his face.

"Is this really what young women read these days?" He asked the exec when he approached him, pointing to an article titled _"How to please your man orally though the magic of Tantra?"_

"You… should see what young men read, sir." The executive said as he picked up an issue of FHM.

* * *

"You should keep better magazines in the reception area." Steve chided Tony once he verified that he was not the informer, the specifics of which will be revealed in the passage of time.

"I tried _Popular Mechanics _and _Omni _but it doesn't seem that everybody shares my taste in literature." Tony shrugged.

"You can't go wrong with _National Geographic._" Steve insisted.

Tony laughed hard at that "I think that would be a little more… _graphic _than FHM."

"I miss the _Saturday Evening Post._" Cap lamented.

"Why are you really here, Steve?" Tony asked. He didn't look much better than he had the day that they assaulted the Syndicate at the airport. In fact, he looked worse. He had been working long hours and fighting menaces both with the Avengers and on his own. He looked like he could sleep for a thousand years.

"I suppose that I needed to clear the air between us." Steve said "I haven't been admitting the things that bothered me, and Bernie helped me see that holding these things inside have been eating me away."

"I know exactly what you are saying. I let the bottle do the same thing to me." Tony admitted.

"I suppose that secrets can be as intoxicating as alcohol."

"Alcoholism thrives on secrets." Tony said in a low voice.

"It started during that time, I think." Steve said "It wasn't really until the armor wars that it happened, though."

"What?"

"The death of our friendship." Cap said forthrightly, as was his way.

There was a moment of silence.

"I… thought that we had solved these problems after Galactic Storm." Tony finally said, invoking the code name that the Avengers had adopted for the Kree/Shir'arr War.

"We buried the hatchet, but we left the handle sticking out." Steve said "Your pulling rank on me during that conflict was just a symptom of the greater problem."

"What is the problem? I know that I betrayed your trust in the vault when you were… going through a rough time. I've already apologized for that."

"Then you tried to bribe me." Steve said.

"I tried to _help_ you!" Tony raised his voice.

"That's the problem! You think that the only way to solve a problem is to throw money at it!" Steve didn't even realize that they had started shouting.

"I never heard you complaining when I wrote million dollar checks to the Avengers!" Tony yelled.

"Why would I? Its such a convenient tax write off!" Steve fired back.

"God damn it Steve! We've been friends for years! I respect you more than any other man on this planet and you know it! We aren't all as perfect as you but WHY CAN'T YOU FORGIVE US FOR THAT!!!???"

"Because each and every year you remind me more of your father!" Steve finally yelled, at last realizing that they were in each other's face and he couldn't hold it in any more.

"You…" Tony almost stuttered.

"Tony, I'm sorry, I didn't mean…"

"You knew my father?" Tony swallowed, getting pale.

"I wish each and every year that I didn't. He was one man I wish I never met." Cap said hollowly, walking to one of the meeting room chairs and sitting down. He had no idea how to proceed with this, but he knew that he had to tell Tony.

"Why didn't you ever tell me?" Tony asked, stunned and confused. He had been born to his father late in life, well after WWII, but he could not conceive that the man would not brag about meeting Captain America. He was a born braggart who had seemingly invoked every meeting with every distinguished personage that he had ever met.

"I've been telling a story." Cap admitted "I've been telling you all a story about the war years that is not entirely accurate. I've tried not to lie about those years, but there is so much that I have withheld. Not because it is top secret, because everyone knows that veil of secrecy expires after 50 years, but because it is painful to my own heart and I don't want to talk about it. Don't you understand that, Tony?"

Tony nodded.

"Bernie showed me that letting these burdens off my shoulders… telling this story… has made me feel better than I have in years. No matter how much I trust all of you who were there in the beginning, who fished me out of the ocean and gave me a family when all those I loved were gone. I could never tell you these things. You would realize that I'm not as perfect as I want to be. Not as perfect as I have to be. If I tell you these things you will see my weakness, my flaws, and you will cast me out. I won't be worthy to be an Avenger anymore, and that is the greatest fear in my life."

"I understand exactly what you mean, Steve. I was there too at one point." Tony said with shame, thinking of the day he spent redesigning his helmet so that he could drink through the mouth slit. The day that he spent trying to figure out a way to tube Jack Daniels from a concealed compartment in his armor. The day that they removed him as the chairman of the Avengers for being a worthless drunk.

"I told Bernie about my childhood, and I told Rachel what drove me to the Army… what drove me to desperation. I told Wanda why I became Captain America. Now I have a story to tell you. I can only hope that it… exorcises more of these demons. We were friends once, Tony, and I wish like hell that we could be friends again."

Tony looked down at his empty glass. It had been filled with 7-up. He wished like hell it had been filled with something stronger. He sat down next to Steve Rogers, trying hard to see Captain America in the huddled man that was about to tell him his deepest secrets. He knew from experience that none of them were as invincible as they looked.

"Consider my schedule cleared, Steve." Tony said. "What are you going to tell me?"

"How the war started, Tony." Steve said "How my war started."

* * *

1941 was the year that it all came together.

In many ways 1941 was the roughest year of his life, going through his growing pains as a super hero. Having the Sub Mariner punch him though a brick wall and call him an insect. Having the Human Torch call him a clown and threaten to barbecue him. He did not yet have his invincible shield, but rather a simple piece of tooled titanium that was no good for throwing but stopped bullets just fine. Criminals came to fear the sound of bullets whining off of Captain America's shield. He continued his daily training regimen with his bevy of instructors, and old Jiang even told him that he was one of the finest students of Kung Fu that he had trained. His Kickboxing instructor kept chiding him for using "That Asian crap" during their sparing matches, but Steve was slowly finding his way to his own fighting style. It was a distinctive, instinctual style that focused on whatever was appropriate to the situation. His instructors knew that he was growing beyond their control, but were more proud of that than angry.

He had earned the admiration of the nation, the trust of his superiors, and the grudging respect of his peers. When he had finally met the Avenging Angel the man hadn't said a peep about why he refused to gun down criminals with Tommy guns and such. One look at him in action and it was obvious that he didn't need to. The day of the "Mystery man" was drawing to a close, and was being replaced by something else. Cap was placed on that mantle next to those few others. It was an interesting name that they had come up with to explain them. They did not call them by the bulky term "Enhanced Human" as the Government officers that created him seemed to use. The term had first been coined by the New York city media to describe the battle between the Sub Mariner and the Human Torch.

They called them "Marvels" and he was proud to be counted among them.

Best of all he was no longer alone. James Buchanan Barnes, the teenager that had discovered him in a moment of weakness, had presented him with a dilemma. How could he be sure that he would keep his secret. There was only one way that he could think of, and that was to make it his secret too. Steve had actually been the one to suggest that the young boy become his costumed partner. He had found out the hard way that he needed someone to watch his back. Jimmy Barnes was a big, tough kid. He was everything that Steve Rogers had not been. A natural athlete and born soldier that had accomplished a lot despite his young age. Steve Rogers had nicknamed him "Bucky" both as a play on his middle name and poking fun at his devotion to The Ohio State University Buckeyes. It became the name of a young man that would fight by his side for four long years.

The years would not seem as long with Buck by his side.

"Hey, Cap!" Bucky yelled as he leapt down off of the rafters of the warehouse hideout of the fifth columnists "Get a load of this!"

He landed hard on a plank that was counterbalancing a huge crate, toppling it over on a pair of goons that had been shooting at then from behind it.

Steve charged the goons who had fled from the fall of the crate and bashed them with his shield. One of them tried to pistol whip him but connected with nothing but air. The next second a red fist smashed into his face and robbed him of consciousness. Steve had not even hit him as hard as he could. He hardly ever found the need to hit anybody that hard anymore. Another one thought that they were sneaking up on him with a knife, but a big red boot to the sternum robbed them of the notion. He saw another one behind a row of boxes open up on him, and interposed the shield between him and Bucky, taking a knee while pulling Bucky down to a similarly low position. The familiar whine of bullets on the shield told him that it was still too tempting a target for criminals to pass up.

"Change up or curve ball?" Bucky asked with a smile. Nothing seemed to bring him down.

"Definitely a change up." Cap said.

What the fifth columnists never seemed to figure out about their Lugers was that they made a distinctive click when they needed to be reloaded, and that Cap's hearing was sharp enough to pick it up.

"Now!" Cap yelled when he heard the click, and Bucky leapt up onto his shoulders. With a powerful thrust of his legs Cap heaved himself to a standing position, and combined with a similar heave from Bucky he propelled the young man so high in the air that it would have made a championship cheerleading squad's jaw drop. Bucky did a back flip in the air and came down on the goon with a devastating drop kick that sent him careening through a stack of oil cans.

"Yeah!" Bucky said with a fist pump as he got to his feet. "That all of them? Let em all come on! "

Steve burst past him, a red white a blue blur, and intercepted more bullets, but these ones were at such close range that the ricochets killed the man who was firing. The coward had been hiding behind the oil cans, and only moved when his cover was disturbed.

"Cripes!" Bucky said, looking at the bloody mess that was left of the man. One of the bullets had broken through his front teeth and left a ragged hole in the back of his head. "He's… is he dead, Cap?"

Captain America looked down at the dead man, with remorse but no sorrow. Those were different days for him, with different methods. The shield that he would carry with him into the frozen dreams of suspended animation was indestructible, and whatever bullets struck it fell to the ground with all of their momentum stolen because of the unique properties of the metal. That Titanium shield, though, had no such properties. Captain America was a soldier, trained to kill when necessary but also trained to know when it was not. Trained to minimize casualties and take prisoners. He would never intentionally murder a man, but he could not stop a man from murdering himself. He had needed to chose between this man and Bucky, and that was an easy choice to make.

"Lets get out of here Buck." Cap said simply "The cops are waiting for us outside."

* * *

"I never saw a dead guy before, Cap." Bucky admitted that night, still disturbed by what he had seen.

"I wish that I could say the same thing." Steve said.

They were both in their Army uniforms. Bucky had been assigned to him as his driver (even though he was a little young to drive) to prevent the unseemly appearance of fraternization. At first General Phillips had been less than thrilled about the idea of Captain America having a teen sidekick following him around, but after the first couple of missions he could not argue with the results. As a team, they were much more effective than he had been alone. Nobody had eyes on the back of their head, after all. It was one of the earliest lessons of soldiering to always make sure that you had a buddy to watch your back.

"This is dangerous work we do, Buck. As much as we try to prevent it sometimes people are going to get hurt anyway. Sometimes people are even going to die. If you are having second thoughts about this, Icompletely understand."

"Oh, holy Mollie! No way, Cap." Bucky said "Its just… I guess that it is something that I'll have to get used to."

_I hope not, kid. _Steve thought_ I hope that none of us ever have to get used to it._

* * *

It was the first of December 1941. The first day that Captain America met Howard Stark. As he would tell the man's son more than 60 years later he wished with all his heart that he had not made the gentleman's acquaintance. Captain America and Bucky were coming back from a secret mission in Argentina, passengers on an experimental airplane that was a precursor to the long range bombers that the Army Air Corps were desperately trying to develop. Watching the British swing in the wind during the Battle of Britain, with Hitler relentlessly "Blitzing" London, was a wake up call for the American military that air power might be the difference between victory and defeat if it ever came to war in the western hemisphere. Cap didn't know, but that plane had been designed by Howard Stark. He was about to find out.

"How are you feeling, champ?" Cap asked Bucky as the plane taxied to a stop "You look kind of green around the gills."

"Don't worry about me, Cap. It's just that I don't like planes at all."

"I don't blame you." Captain America said truthfully. He had never set foot on a plane in his life before he joined the Army, and now it seemed he had to hop on one every week.

As soon as the ramp was down, Captain America noticed the man storming toward them. He had an expensive suit, a pencil thin mustache, and an aviator's scarf. He was not, however, a pilot. Steve didn't know how he knew that, but he could tell. Maybe it was something in the eyes, the gait, the way he held himself. Captain America knew for a fact that this man didn't have the nerves to be a pilot. A colonel and a major shuffled behind him, looking very put upon. It was almost as cold in that hanger as it had been the day when he last saw his mother alive. Steam puffed with every breath. Cap saluted the Colonel when they closed to the appropriate distance, and Bucky followed suit.

"Captain!" The man with the mustache interrupted before Cap could give the greeting of the day. "It is so fabulous to finally meet you in person. I've heard so much about you!"

"Captain, this is Howard Stark." The Colonel interjected, seeming to want to inject some kind of manners and decorum into the conversation.

Cap extended his hand to the man, who gave him what he probably considered a firm handshake. Steve had been afraid to give the good firm handshake ever since his transformation, for fear that he would crush all the bones in someone's hand.

"It is good to meet you, Mr. Stark." Cap responded politely, waiting to see if his first impression of this man was wrong.

"How did you like the ride?" Stark asked, nodding to the plane.

"It was…" _nauseating _Cap wanted to say "a pretty smooth ride."

"It should be! I designed it myself, after all." Stark said with a puffed out chest. "Pretty soon the sky will be full of 'em."

"What brings you to Camp Leleigh, Mr. Stark?" Cap asked.

"I just wanted to meet the man who launched my fortunes." Stark said with a smile that released a breath smelling ever so slightly of booze.

"How did I do that, Mr. Stark?" Cap asked in honest bewilderment.

"You took out old man Maxon. The old bastard was a thorn in my side for years, undercutting me and getting all my contracts. Now I own his company and, thanks to you Stark International is the number one provider of munitions to the Army." Stark said with an alligator grin, patting him on the shoulder.

"Mr. Stark, I captured George Maxon because he was a Nazi sympathizer and a fifth columnist. I appreciate your… gratitude but I cannot accept undue praise. I'm just a soldier doing my job." Steve said it all as evenly as he could, hoping that it held the proper balance of humility and rejection of nonsense.

"You are too humble, Captain." Stark said, patting him on both shoulders this time "You have to realize that your efforts have far reaching consequences. That is why I'm here, after all. You deserve to be rewarded for all that you have done for this country."

Cap turned to Bucky and then looked back. "Mr. Stark, maybe we should speak more privately."

Bucky, to his credit, got the message.

"I'll meet you at the chow hall, Cap." Bucky said "I want to tell all the guys about Argentina anyway."

The major accompanied Bucky, needing to get his account of the actions taken in South America for some tedious paperwork he was doing. That left Cap and the colonel with Stark. He couldn't just tell the colonel to buzz off, so he was just going to have to say what he had to say in front of a superior officer.

"I don't know why you came here, Mr. Stark, but I won't lie to you and tell you that I like where this is going.

"Oh, it is nothing sinister at all." Stark insured him "It is just a reward for your hard service and another opportunity to serve your country."

"I am just a soldier. No rewards are necessary and I serve my country every day." Cap said, trying not to let his exasperation with the man show.

"I am sure that is true, and it is no doubt why you have earned such a degree of trust with the American public." Stark's smile never faltered "That is why you are exactly the man I need as a spokesman for Stark International."

Cap looked to the Colonel, who had no expression, and then back to Stark.

"Mr. Stark, are you suggesting that I… enhance my Army pay by coming to work for you?"

"That is exactly what I am suggesting." Stark laughed "You and I could go a long way together. You could…"

"Make the country forget that Maxon Aviation sold to the Nazis, just like you are still selling to the Japanese." Cap interrupted him.

That stopped the conversation cold, but Stark swiftly recovered.

"I can see how you might get that impression, but…"

"Mr. Stark. I am afraid that I cannot accept your generous offer." Cap said in a tone of voice that was colder than the air in the hanger.

"Captain… you haven't even heard my salary offer yet…"

"All of the money in Japan couldn't buy my service, Mr. Stark." Cap said resolutely.

Silence reigned.

"I understand that a decision of this magnitude cannot be come to immediately. I'll let you sleep on it a bit. What do you say about a week?" Stark's smile was more artificial than ever. It was like it was carved out of iron. He extended his hand again, but Cap did not take it this time.

"Good Day, Mr. Stark." Cap said simply.

"I'll be in touch." The businessman promised as he walked off.

The Colonel behind him turned to follow him, but hesitated and turned back to Captain America with a smile on his face and saluted him.

Steve returned the salute, and when Stark was out of earshot the man said simply "Well said. Did you mean it?"

"Every word, sir." Cap insured him.

"If we had a few hundred like you, the Nazis and the Japs would just give up and go home." The Colonel said.

"Have I made your acquaintance, sir?" Cap asked as the colonel shook his hand.

"Probably not. My name's Doolittle and I'm with the Air Corps."

"I've heard of you, sir." Cap said, somewhat impressed "They say you're the best in the entire corps."

Colonel Doolittle smiled "I could say the same thing about you, Captain."

* * *

In every man's life there is a day that they will never forget. A day that for decades everyone will want to know "Where were you when…" In a frozen winter at Valley Forge an audacious writer-turned-soldier wrote "These are the times that try men's souls." Two centuries after Thomas Payne wrote those words in ink that froze on the parchment, another cold winter tried the souls of the country that he only knew in his dreams. The country he bled to build, secure in its place during a century of struggle, had the rudest awakening in its history. Everyone is familiar with a radio sign: Tora, tora, tora. Everyone is familiar with Admiral Nimitz proclamation that the warning was only an hour late. If you close your eyes you can almost see the beautiful Hawaiian sky blackened by hundreds of Mitsubishi Zeroes. If you open your ears and your heart when standing on the banks of that beautiful harbor view… you can still hear the screams.

The dead, after all, do not forget.

It was a Sunday morning. Captain Steve Rogers and Private James Buchanan Barnes were in church. The Chaplin was giving a poetic homily on the parable of the farmer. Then a Corporal ran in, looking like he had seen a ghost, and ran to the Chaplin's side. It was an almost unholy interruption of the service, but when he whispered to the Chaplin the man of God turned as pale as he was. When he turned to his congregation, his lip trembled. His voice cracked. The confident voice that had been spreading God's word with such eloquence was struck speechless. His mouth seemed full of cotton as he said the words.

"The Japanese… have… they have bombed the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor."

The congregation erupted in murmurs, gasps, and unseemly shouts that used language perhaps not suited to a house of God. Bucky Barnes dropped the bible that he had clutched to his chest. But there is one reaction that we must zoom in closer to see. We do not want to look at it, but we cannot look away. For we have looked so close at this man so many times that we must look this one last time. We do not want to know what goes through the mind of our heroes at moments such as these, because we would like to think that they are not as human as us. We would like to think that superhuman muscles make superhuman minds and unbreakable hearts. But we are here to learn. We are here to learn what makes a man like Steve Rogers; an invincible soldier with an unbreakable will and the heart to persevere through hell and high water. We have to look at the moment when that strong heart failed.

The first thing to go through his mind was a high, white wall of disbelief. Then it broke down, crumbling around him. Then came the anger, red and raw like salt rubbed into a wound. Then it finally came… the words in the last letter from his brother:

_I'm finally here, Steve. It is a paradise like you can't imagine. After all that time at sea on the Arizona I'm finally in Hawaii. I wish that I could tell you how wonderful Pearl Harbor is._

Steve Rogers' heart broke.

* * *

"You get me on that plane NOW!" Steve screamed at General Phillips "I don't care what it takes! I'm going there right now!"

"We can't risk it, Rogers." We don't know what is happening over there. We don't know if the Japanese are going to send a second wave…"

"I don't care!" Steve screamed "If they attack again, I should be there! I should have been there to begin with!"

"There is no way we could have known…"

"Don't give me that!" Steve was red in the face, having cut crescent shaped wounds in his palms with his own fingernails from the tightness of his fists. "I get top secret briefings every day! Military Intelligence had to know SOMETHING!"

"Don't you raise your voice to me, CAPTAIN!" General Phillips screamed back at him "I understand what you are going through, but I cannot in good conscience send you alone into the heart of this raging battle. Maybe if we could get in touch with the Torch… The Sub Mariner… they are already fighting the Krauts in the Atlantic…"

"Namor is a homicidal lunatic and the Torch is a mechanical abomination!" Major Starling tried to interject in his annoying "I went to Yale" tone of voice.

"SHUT UP!" Cap and General Phillips screamed at the same time before turning back to each other.

"I'm not even going to tell you how out of line you are, soldier." The General said with narrowed eyes "You know that you are like a son to me, but sometimes a father has to give his son a little tough love…"

"My brother…" Steve choked out, fighting tears.

"Excuse me, Rogers?" The General asked in surprise.

"My brother, sir… he's stationed at Pearl…" Steve could not finish the sentence, but he didn't need to.

"Oh God." General Phillips said.

"If there is any chance… any chance at all…" Steve begged the man who had been like a second father to him.

"There's… only the experimental bomber. It is the only one that could possibly fly that far."

"Then that's the one we have to use." Steve insisted, recovering from his overpowering emotions. Finally seeing hope.

"We can't." General Phillips said with obvious remorse.

"What?!" Steve asked in shock "Why not?"

"Because Stark is taking back the prototype today… he says…"

Steve didn't even wait for the General to finish, turning on his heel and storming out without offering a salute.

"Rogers!" The General shouted impotently.

* * *

The men that Stark had assembled to prepare the ST-208 for transport scattered in the wake of the red white and blue hurricane that tore through them. When Stark had ordered them to "Stop him!" They had thought that it was an easy enough command. There was 22 of them and just one of him. They didn't stand a chance. Stark looked on breathlessly as his men flew through the air as if launched from a cannon, skidded along the ground as if propelled by a rocket, and rolled as far as a hard-thrown bowling ball. He had never seen anything like it in his life. Howard Stark had a vivid imagination, which he would pass onto his son, but Captain America in battle was like nothing he could have imagined. The most stunning thing was that he seemed to be holding back, as if he wasn't trying to hurt them.

"Stop!" Howard Stark yelled at Captain America as he leapt to the boarding ramp "This is property of Stark International! If you take this plane you are guilty of hijacking!"

"What about what you are guilty of?" Steve yelled back.

"I don't know what you mean, I only tried…" Stark began, but he had gotten too close. One red-gloved fist engulfed the front of his expensive suit and hoisted him into the air. Howard Stark was a big man, weighing almost 200 pounds, but Captain America lifted him like a rag doll.

As he stared into the red, bloodshot eyes of the man who would become a living legend, Howard Stark realized the mistake that he had made.

"Every Zero, every torpedo, every bomb, every shell, every round of ammunition…" Captain America snarled, saliva spraying with every breath. "How much of it was made with the steel and the brass that you sold to the Japanese? How many? HOW MANY MEN DID YOU KILL TODAY!?"

"I didn't kill anyone!" Howard Stark squeaked "I just wanted to get ahead! That's the American dream isn't it!?"

Captain America hurled him halfway across the airplane hanger, splintering the stand of crates nearly 20 yards away.

"I hope you got a good return on your investment!" Cap yelled at him as he stumbled out of the mess of crates.

Bucky ran across the airplane hanger, and it was obvious that he had ran across the entire base. As he came to a stop at the ramp of the ST208 he was panting and out of breath.

"Wanna… come.. along…" Bucky gasped.

"Not today, Partner." Steve yelled over the noise of the propellers. "When this is over, I'm going to have to face the music. I'm not going to let you swing with me."

"But I'm your partner…" Bucky begged, grasping at straws.

"You're my friend, too, and that comes first." Cap said without any room for argument.

"You aren't getting on that plane without me!" Bucky demanded.

Even years later Steve still felt bad about doing it. It was a love tap. The boy must have hardly felt it. If an enemy had tried it on him there was no way that he could have hit him so easily, but Steve was his friend and it was the last thing he was expecting. It was a move that he had not taught him. His palm struck the young man in the jaw so fast that he didn't even see it coming, and his lights went out instantly as his head snapped back. That palm strike had the force of a heavyweight's uppercut, and Bucky Barnes was unconscious before he hit the ground. Even to this day he could not actually believe that he actually struck Bucky.

He would have long years to regret it.

As Steve boarded the experimental plane the ramp closed behind him. Obviously the pilot was expecting him. As he marched into the cockpit he was not the least bit surprised to see who was in that pilot's seat.

"Colonel Doolittle, I presume." Captain America said.

"At your service." The man said with a mischievous grin "I hear Hawaii is beautiful this time of year, but we have to stop at least in California to refuel. I don't think that they are going to be all that cooperative."

"You'd be surprised how persuasive I can be." Cap assured him.

The Colonel believed him.

* * *

He was too late.

They had flown all day and all night it seemed, but in the end it didn't even matter. He had worked alongside the nurses, the doctors, the rescue workers. He had run around, shouted orders, galvanized the troops and sailors. Maybe he had even saved a couple lives, but he would never forget the fingers trying to claw through the steel. He would always hear the screams of the men drowning inside the Utah. He had beat his fists bloody trying to break through the bulkhead, but even a super soldier was not that strong. They had all died in front of him, and he couldn't even see through the tears. He had swam in water red with blood under burning oil slicks to get to men who died in his arms.

"You're… here… Cap…" one of them had gasped to him in those last moments "everything… gonna… be.. ok…"

He died a little more with each of them, but he never stopped trying, never listened to what the brass was trying to tell him, didn't want to hear what they were trying to say. He ignored the evidence of his own eyes, never asked the question he didn't want the answer to. He was like a shark, knowing that if he stopped moving… he would die. So he kept on trying, with all his heart, to save every life. He tried until his uniform was almost unrecognizable; stained in blood and soot. He tore off his chain mail shirt to use the cotton underneath as a tourniquet to save the life of one young man. One young man among so many. So that is how he stood, bare-chested, looking out over the harbor at a sunset that reminded him of all the blood.

He thought of a young man with his fingers stained with ink, who worked so hard so that his little brother would have the opportunities that were out of his reach. A hardscrabble kid who punched his way through the great depression and lived his adult life wrapped in Navy blue. A young man who, in his last letter had talked about what a relief it would be to end his term of service in January and finally come home to New York. Come home and start the life he had always dreamed of. He talked about how lucky he was that the military conscription act didn't apply to a longtime volunteer such as himself. He talked a lot about how lucky he was. Steve Rogers thought about Franky boy that evening on the beach, looking at the bloody sunset, and he cried like he would never stop.

_The Arizona went down with all hands… no survivors._ Had been one of the first things the Admiral told him. He had not let himself hear it, but he couldn't deny it. Franklin Rogers was dead. Like his mother. Like his father. Like Sara. It was only him now, and the entire nation was looking to him. Looking to him because they were afraid. Looking to him because he was a hero. It was time for him to do what heroes did. It was time for him to slay the monster.

Captain America tore off his mask, and underneath it was Steve Rogers.

"You Jap bastards!" He screamed "You worthless yellow bastards! I hate you! I hate you and I'm going to kill you! I swear to God I'm GOING TO KILL YOU ALL!!!"

The howl of absolute loss and rage echoed over the harbor, disturbing seagulls and making them take flight. It would be a proclamation that would haunt him over long years. A moment of weakness that he could never forget. For Captain America had failed, and it was up to Steve Rogers to pick up the pieces.

* * *

"My God, Steve." Tony said in shock. Steve was openly weeping, his head in his hands. He had broken down at the end, in telling Tony about the harbor, unable to relate him moment of rage and weakness.

"I'm sorry, Tony." Steve cried "I could never tell you. There are some things that nobody should have to know…"

"It's ok, Steve." Tony assured him, his hand on his shoulder "I knew what kind of man my father was. I didn't have any illusions about him."

"You aren't like him." Steve assured him "Not really… but I suppose in small ways you are. It is those moments when you remind me of him… that I can't let myself trust you."

Iron-man remembered his father, an abusive, alcoholic egomaniac, and thought of the man he saw when he looked in the mirror. In that moment of clarity, he could not blame Steve for his feelings. He could not blame him for not telling him all these years, because Tony had been there to fish him out of the ocean, bring him to life, one of the ones who made his life have meaning again. How could a man of honor like Captain America repay him by bringing up ancient history about his father? He knew well why this secret had eaten away at the proud soldier's soul.

"If you didn't trust me, then why did you come to me with this?" Tony asked.

"Because I had to know it wasn't you." Cap said with that familiar confidence and resolve "So there could be someone I could trust."

"I want to be that man." Tony said "But you have to know… that there have been some things that I have been keeping from you."

But Tony Stark would not get the chance to tell the Super Soldier, for it was much too late for that now.

"Mr. Stark!" the overly officious personal assistant burst in.

"Harvey, didn't I ask that we not be disturbed?"

"This is an emergency!" The assistant almost yelped "You have to turn on the television! CNN is showing an emergency session of the united nations, and it is all about the Avengers!"

Tony Stark did just that, and would never forget the sight.

…_so it is the decision of the United Nations to revoke and deny status to the Avengers as a legitimate peacekeeping entity on the world stage. It is therefore resolved that all clearance and authority previously outlined is now null and void, and at the bequest of the United States all citizens thereof shall be remained to their previous status and subject to legal determination outlined in the laws of that sovereign nation._

"Good Lord." Tony Stark gasped.

The United Nations had just fired the Avengers. Captain America's heart sank, and he had a feeling that the worst was yet to come.

**Next:**

**A year in hell**

**_Is this the end of Earth's Mightiest Heroes? What is Iron Man's secret? How did a shattered and demoralized Captain America become the indomitable hero we know today? Tune in next week, True Believers!_**


	12. A year in hell

**To Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Chapter Ten: A year in hell**

What a week it had been.

As the second week of November approached its end the Avengers had lost their appeal to the general assembly to the United Nations. They had been sanctioned and relieved of their clearance partially as a budget concern and partially for a variety of political opposition that saw the Avengers as a purely American interest. As ashamed as Steve was to admit it, having Captain America as its most prominent member and chairman of the Avengers had to have had a hand in that misconception. The percentage of international members of the Avengers had been a concern for months, but Captain America had been fighting for years to insure the Avengers' right of self determination of its membership. Invitation only, subject to vote by the senior membership. Looking back, maybe he shouldn't have fought so hard. It might have cost the Avengers everything.

"Tell me it isn't so, Tony." Steve said to Iron-Man, who was holding his helmet in his hands and examining his reflection in the polished surface.

"I wish that I could."

In the last week Tony had been the only one that he could trust. They had still not unmasked the traitor within the Avengers, although he had his suspicions. They had fought side by side to resist the United Nations, but the other founding members had been excluded from the process. Janet and Hank had resented it, but Thor had seemed less offended. The three of them had been delegated the responsibility of running the Avengers while Iron-Man and Captain America fought a very different kind of fight in Geneva, where the hearings had been scheduled.

"China was against us from the start. So was Russia. We knew that those were votes we couldn't get. But France? Germany? Spain? Italy? What the hell is happening in the world, Tony?"

"It is a different world, with different rules, and they don't trust us anymore." Tony Stark said with a sadness that came from his soul "They see us as symbols of imperialism, not independence, and the elections were the last straw."

Steve clenched his fists in frustration. Even after all this time he was still tied in knots and this situation had only made things worse. Matt Murdock had been in touch, as had Bernadette Rosenthal. Tony had put them both on the payroll and set them to work on the legal matters that they knew that they would have to face just as soon as the hearings closed session and they returned to New York.

Tony Stark threw his helmet through a glass table and spouted a creative gout of profanity. He had made a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake and Cap understood why he was upset with himself. He had been upset at Tony Stark, too.

"How am I going to tell the others?" Tony asked the living legend "How am I going to tell the Avengers that I broke the trust? The Maria Stark foundation is bankrupt, the Avengers have no funding, and it is all my fault."

"You did what you had to do to save your company, Tony." Cap said softly, the edges of his anger gone but the calm of forgiveness not yet there. Tony had explained all about how he had needed the money to defeat the buyout led by Stane and the Brand corp. The hostile takeover that had troubled him for months would now never happen, but the results of his actions were devastating.

"How could I know that the UN would turn on us? Take our funding and our clearance? The foundation was… superfluous. I had no idea that this could happen."

"The Avengers have no funding. We have no legal status in UN member countries. We have no clearance to operate in the United States, and the White House has given us a vote of no confidence. Congress is evenly split on whether to even restore our previous status as a government sanctioned law enforcement agency. All of this is not your fault, Tony."

"I should have known." Iron-Man said. "I should have seen. Too many things happening at the same time…"

Maybe Tony Stark was right, but if he was then weren't they all to blame? They all had the chance to see the net closing in. Now they were all trapped. Earths Mightiest Heroes had defeated Ultron, Kang, the Mandarin, Dr Doom, and a thousand other menaces. Now they found themselves brought to their knees by nothing more or less than bureaucratic red tape. Steve Rogers turned to his longtime friend, saw the agony etched on his features, and couldn't stand the sight. The Invincible Iron Man had given up hope, and that was not something that could be permitted.

"We're not done yet, Tony." Cap said in a determined voice. "Not by a long shot."

* * *

"She's awake." Nurse Reyes told Henry Pym.

It had been pure chance that Hank Pym had been visiting just when he had. He had come every day to check on her status, because he knew that there was no way that Cap could. He knew that Rachel was important to Steve. He had been one of the few Avengers to ever see them together, see the way that they interacted. It sort of reminded him of the way he and Janet had been, all those years ago when things were still new. There was a lot of water under the bridge, and a lot of past to haunt him, but even Hank was surprised at his joy when he heard that Rachel was awake.

"I would like to see her if that is possible. I know that I am not a relative…"

"You are a doctor, right?" Nurse Reyes said with a smile on her face, causing Hank to smile back. "I'm sure that there would be no problem at all."

Nurse Reyes had been very kind, almost flirtatious, with Hank throughout the entire drama. It made the Avenger wonder about her intentions. He was old enough to know better, though, and there were still too many complicated emotions troubling him to consider broadening his horizons with the beautiful head nurse. The situation with Janet for one, and the upcoming assemblage of Avengers for another. Henry Pym had no less than three former lovers in the assembled Avengers, and every time they got together he held his breath. Luckily, two out of the three kept their distance from the team most of the time, and the third simply kept quiet about their affair. These were the thoughts that distracted him as he walked down the hallway to Rachel Leighton's room.

"Rachel?" Hank said as he stepped up to the door. He did not want to walk in uninvited.

Rachel looked up from her bed at the adventuring scientist. She looked like she had been crying, and had dark black circles under her eyes. Still, she had such a vibrant life in her dark green eyes. It was good to see.

"Doctor Pym?" She said in a quiet voice. After sleeping for a week her voice would need some time to reach its full volume.

"How many times do I have to tell you that you can call me Hank?" Pym said with that winning smile that had once been on the cover of Scientific American.

"What are you doing here?" She asked with a trace a fear, a little bit of a sob.

"I came to see you. Do you mind if I come in?" Hank asked.

"I don't think I could stop you." Rachel said evasively.

"I'm not going to intrude if I'm not wanted. I'm not here as a doctor. I'm just here as a friend."

Rachel was silent for a moment.

"Please come in." She said, looking at him with those sad, lost eyes.

Doctor Henry Pym came in and took a seat next to her, near the foot of her bed. He had found in the course of practicing his bedside manner that standing over a patient instantly made them feel even more powerless than the situation they were in. However, taking up a seat at an oblique angle to their field of vision created a perception of a totally different relationship. He was close enough to take her hand if it was offered, yet far enough away to not intrude upon personal space. He hoped that it would have the desired effect.

"I've had enough of doctors." Rachel said, her eyes welling up again "I'm… I'm so sorry for what I did and… the questions they are asking me… I just want to…"

"I understand." Hank said softly "You don't have to talk about any of this with me."

"So you aren't here to shrink my head?" She asked with a sniffle.

"No." Hank said with a shake of my head "I've got a couple of degrees under my belt, but psychiatry isn't one of them. I can't judge anyone on their mental state, given my history."

"So you really are just here as a friend?" She asked.

Hank just smiled.

"Do you… really think of me as a friend?" She sniffled.

"Any friend of Steve's is a friend of mine." Hank said "Besides that, I always liked you. You've got spunk."

That got a weak laugh out of Rachel.

"I guess I liked you too. You were always kind to me. Not like Black Widow or Sersi."

"Natasha is… well.. Russian." Hank shrugged "Sersi is just full of herself because Homer wrote her into _the_ _Odyssey._"

"I guess everybody needs a claim to fame." Rachel said with a weak smile.

"You've become a little bit of famous over the past few days." Hank observed.

Rachel closed her eyes tightly and put two fists over them, getting an expression on her face that seemed to say that she was too tired to blush. Her embarrassment was evident.

"I'm so sorry about that." She said "I wasn't thinking…"

"You don't have to make any excuses. I think that this might be all my fault." Hank said, the moment of truth coming. It had never been easy for him to own up to his mistakes. That, as much as anything, had contributed to the decline of his marriage.

"How could it be your fault." Rachel asked, her eyes tearing up "I.. I'm the one…"

"I didn't take into account the history of the Super Soldier serum when I transfused Steve's blood into you. It seemed stable at the time, but every person that has been exposed to it without the accompanying Vita-Ray process has been plagued with mental instability and wide mood swings. Some have even manifested extreme psychosis." Hank Pym said "I never should have done it. I need to apologize to you for that. It could have contributed to your frame of mind and the decisions that you made."

"Oh.. No… Don't…" Rachel said "Its not true. I felt fine for months and months before I saw Steve again. It was… what he told me that sent me over the edge. I wasn't even feeling a little depressed until that. I wasn't paying attention to my feelings and I couldn't deal with them."

"I understand." Hank said.

"You keep saying that." Rachel said, crying openly now "How _can_ you understand? How can you really understand?"

"That is a fair question." Hank said, then swallowed. He didn't know if he could go through with this. Even after all these years he had only told a handful of people. "Let me tell you a story."

* * *

Janet Van Dyne had showed him the trick.

It was a trick that she always showed her lovers eventually. She had done it first for Hank, then for Tony, then for Starfox, then for Paladin. It had never failed to impress. Preparation was the key, of course, because a lot of her garments were treated with unstable molecules to shrink with her. She had stood in front of him as he lay on the bed looking at her with that wry expression he seemed to wear all the time. He had no idea how he had played into her hands. That expression that always seemed to be waiting for something. He had already undressed, but she was wearing an 800 dollar silk nightgown he had just given her. She had stood there, with one hip thrust forward like a dancer in a burlesque revue. Then she had crooked her finger at him in that "come hither" gesture. She was not at all surprised when he complied. Then she had done the trick.

When he reached out to hold her he found himself holding an empty nightgown.

He looked left and right with confusion on his face, and suddenly was even more confused as he was pushed back into the bed by an unseen hand. Even when she was the size of Tinkerbell she was still strong enough to carry a full grown man. Then he began laughing as she settled into his belly button and started tickling him. By the time she grew back up to her full size, sitting conveniently naked in his lap, Kyle Richmond was as red-faced with laughter as she was. She smothered his laughter with her mouth and shoved him down into the expensive sheets. There was fun and there was love, but it was always best when it was both. Janet stroked his cheek with delicate fingers as his surprisingly soft hands worked over her back, gently brushing over the surgical scars that her wings sprouted from.

She tried not to think of Hank, and in a few minutes there was not even a single thought of him in her head. Passion was like a strong drink, and she was drinking from a mug instead of taking shots. She had known Kyle for years without really knowing him, and as he brought her to those white plains of blind pleasure she wondered why that had been so. It was as if life and death had conspired together to keep them apart. The last month had been one of the greatest of her life. It had started out as a little bit of fun, maybe even something to spite Hank, but had become so much more. Their mouths worked together wetly as the rest of them worked beneath the sheets. Somehow he had gotten on top. He had a reputation for inexplicably coming out on top throughout his heroic career, and it seemed that in bed it was no exception. In her dreams she had always seen herself with a man like him. Hank had known this for years, and drove himself crazy trying to be that man for her. Rich, famous, and every inch a bona-fide world-saving superhero. On top of that, he had a wonderful sense of fun and humor that she treasured. It is different when it is love. Oh yes. It is so much different when it is love.

He watched her as she dressed afterward, and she loved the feeling of her eyes on her. She turned to him as she was applying her makeup and smiled. He was laying in a pose like a beefcake poster.

"Do you really have to go?" Nighthawk asked.

"Yes." Janet said "Every Avenger is assembling for this. Steve and Tony are coming back from Geneva and we have to face the Commission on Superhuman Activities if we want to get our clearance back. I have no doubt that they will approve us. It is only a matter of how much trouble they want to give us about it. The world needs the Avengers, whether it understands that or not."

"Well, I wish that I could come. It sounds like fun." Kyle quipped, leaning back in the bed.

She turned to him and stuck her tongue out at him like a teasing little girl.

He got up out of the bed and put on his bath robe, but not before she got one more gratuitous peek for the road. He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. They were so much stronger and muscular than Hank's had ever been, and they squeezed her tight. She wasn't even done with her lipstick yet, and he had already mussed it up with a passionate kiss from over her shoulder. They stood there for a moment, rocking back and forth in the rhythm of the soft jazz music had had playing in the room.

"Have you ever thought about being an Avenger?" She asked, with the sober sincerity of a groom proposing marriage.

"I can barely keep up with the Defenders, and they are a non team." Nighthawk laughed "It is a little too organized for me. Sometimes I like to do things my own way."

"We could spend more time together if you joined." She said hopefully.

"Then we would be co-workers, though." Nighthawk said "I've learned the hard way not to mix business with pleasure."

"I guess that I have, too." The Wasp grumbled, thinking of Hank.

* * *

It had been easier than he thought.

Rachel hadn't known him when he was Ant-man, Giant-man, Goliath, or Yellowjacket. When she had met him, he was just ordinary old Hank Pym. At least as ordinary as Hank Pym ever got. She had a hard time believing all that he had done, how many times he had failed. How he had fought his way through two nervous breakdowns, been disgraced by his actions, been thrown out of the Avengers, and lost his wife. She was more amazed by what happened after. How he had hit rock bottom. How he had been framed by Egghead. How he had been imprisoned with so many of the scum he put behind bars. Most importantly, how he had defeated the Masters of Evil single-handedly, using nothing but his scientific know-how.

"It was the most important moment of my life." Hank told her "I realized that I had defeated the Masters, but not as any of these identities that I had hidden behind. I had done it myself, and it was then that I left the Avengers on my own terms and took the time to rediscover who I was and what I wanted."

"That is an unbelievable story." Rachel said "That was about the time I was starting out as a costumed criminal. I heard some of that stuff in the papers, but they had no idea about all the things that were going on."

"I wish the story was over." Hank said sincerely "I wish that the story could have ended there, because that was a happy ending of sorts."

"I guess happy endings are in short supply." Rachel said.

"It was all an accident that brought me back to the Avengers." Hank said "I was just visiting California, but it turned out that the Avengers had set up their west coast team. I fell in with them, kind of taking over Jarvis' role. But… that was the worst thing I could have done."

"Why?"

"Because it brought it all back." Hank said softly. This was the hardest part of the story to tell. This was the part that he could never bring himself to tell anyone. "I got involved with Tigra while she was dating Simon…"

"Simon?"

"Wonder man."

"That dork from the Swartzenburger movie?"

"Well, not his finest hour, but yes."

"You, Tigra, and him?" Rachel even sounded amused.

"You make it sound like it was all at the same time."

"I thought that the Avengers were so staid and noble all the time. You are just painting a different picture." She giggled. In her weakened condition it was a funny thing to hear.

"It was different." Hank said with a rueful smile "That west coast team was a different scene. Maybe it was just because we were right there on the beach. I don't know. Even so, it was too much of the same. I was reminded of all of my failures. There was an Ultron robot. The only version of Ultron that wasn't psychopathic. I called him Mark, and he was like the son that I never had. He was destroyed by another Ultron, and my greatest failure was rubbed in my face. In the weeks afterward everything fell apart. I felt like I was wasting my life, and when I broke it off with Tigra I decided I was better dead than alive."

That got Rachel's attention.

"You didn't…" Rachel said, looking a little afraid.

Hank Pym nodded, wishing that he could tell her differently.

"I put everything in order. I wrote letters to every one of the Avengers, knowing that they wouldn't understand but hoping that it could spare their feelings. Except for Jan. I called her, and tried to apologize for everything. I owed her that much. Then I took a .33 special, put it to my temple, and pulled the trigger."

It was the hardest admission that he had ever made.

"You shot yourself?" Rachel asked.

"I tried. At the last minute Firebird arrived and pulled the weapon away from my temple. She said that God had sent her to my side. She said that there was a plan for me. To this day, I don't know whether to believe it or not. I do know that she saved me from an enormous mistake, and for that I am grateful. If I had succeeded I wouldn't have just been killing myself. I would have been killing everyone who's life I have saved ever since."

Rachel started crying, and Hank found himself drawing closer to her. He gently put a hand on her shoulder, and she put a hand on top of his.

"I didn't tell you this to make you feel… I just wanted to help you see that you aren't weak. That you aren't alone. That I understand what you are going through and why you did what you did. I… just wanted you to know that there is hope."

"Life… life is too hard." Rachel murmured half remembered words "Nobody can get through without help from their friends."

Hank Pym grasped her hand, and she squeezed hard.

"I'm your friend, Rachel." Hank said

"Are you really? Do you want to be?" Rachel sobbed.

"I want to be." Doctor Henry Pym said, and she embraced him.

Outside the door, Nurse Reyes tried not to make a single sound, but tears were rolling down her cheeks.

* * *

Captain America and Iron Man stepped off the private jet at LaGuardia airport and glared at the assembled reporters waiting for them. They would have taken a Quinjet, but the FAA had grounded all Quinjet traffic from Manhattan island the same day that the UN had revoked their clearance. They had needed to travel by civilian traffic, and Tony Stark would be damned if he was going to travel coach. The reporter's camera's flashed around them like bomb bursts as the vultures closed in. Steve knew that Tony was in no state of mind to face the press. He was just as likely to blast them all with repulsor beams as answer their questions.

"Take off back to the mansion, Tony." Cap said. "I'll take care of them."

"Are you sure, Steve? I could carry you." Tony offered.

Steve thought of how undignified a photo op that would create and shook his head.

"I'll wait for you at the Mansion." Tony finally capitulated.

As Iron-man blasted off and soared into the distance Captain America faced the reporters. He had always been the face of the Avengers in the media, and recognized more faces in the crowd of media than he cared to admit. He had, after all, been answering their questions for years. He did not want to deal with them. This was not the time for a press conference. But he knew that he had to do it, because it was his job. It was the responsibility that he had chosen to shoulder. He only hoped that he could keep on Captain America's mask; the ultimately confident man who always knew the right thing to say. Under that mask was Steve Rogers, and he said what he felt. This was a job for Captain America.

"Ladies and gentleman of the press." Cap said in a strong, loud voice that quieted all the shouted questions that had been scrambling over each other "How can I help you today?"

A few reporters started asking questions over each other again, and he impatiently held up his hand in a "stop" gesture, shutting them up. "I will take your questions one at a time."

The first reporter he pointed to asked what the Avengers were going to do in the wake of the UN decision.

"The Avengers are going to continue as we always have. Our charter states that we believe in the rights of humanity will permit no interference in the achievement of its destiny. We will continue to protect the world, and we will go wherever we are needed." He repeated almost world for word what he had said in closing to the United Nations, visibly shaming some of the delegates on the floor.

The next reporter shouted a question about the US government's interference in their operations.

"We are in a time of transition." Cap said "I fully expect that we will straighten everything out in due course."

The next reporter was a beautiful woman, and asked about the nature of his relationship with Diamondback. He heard a few reporters hissing around her. She must have been from a gossip rag like People or US weekly. He surprised even himself by not hesitating.

"Diamondback is a valued ally and a good friend, regardless of her history. Her contributions to the cause of justice on numerous occasions cannot be questioned. I am proud to count her among my friends and wish for her swift recovery." He knew that the answer would not satisfy the woman and that was a point of satisfaction for him. He ignored her protests and moved on to the next question.

The reporter from USA Today naturally asked if he was angry that the UN came to the decision that it did.

"Yes." Captain America said in no uncertain terms, but saw no reason to elaborate. The Reporter frowned at that non-quote as Cap moved on.

The gentleman from Newsweek asked if he was planning legal action against the US Government for their actions against the Avengers.

"The Avengers do not fight their battles in the courtroom." Cap said ominously "I believe that the Government will see the error of its ways and restore the status under which we operated previous to our tenure under UN jurisdiction. I also believe that UN member nations will come to realize that we will come to their aid without hesitation in any emergency."

Cap held up one finger, indicating that he would take one more question, causing an uproar among the assembled reporters. Once that died down he carefully selected the gentleman from the New York Times. He knew the man well, and knew that he may ask a hardball question. He had never, however, ask him a stupid one. Next to him, the reporter from the Daily Bugle scowled.

"Captain, there are rumors that there are more to the Avengers current troubles than meet the eye. That there is a right wing conspiracy that goes all the way back to the White House." Reporters all around him started yelling and swearing, but he would not be swayed "How do you respond to the accusations that your refusal to support the President during the election directly correlates to the administration's refusal to support you in this time of crisis!?"

Captain America was impressed despite himself, for the man had outdone himself. If this was to be the last question, it would be the hardest to answer. He had to carefully chose every word, because it would likely hit the AP wire in 10 minutes and be around the world in less that that. There could be no room for error.

* * *

Bernie held her breath.

Everyone in her office had been watching the television, and she thought that the President was addressing the nation to tell them that they were selling Alaska back to Russia judging by the look on their faces. She had been working all week hand in hand with Matt, and trying not to be too distracted by thoughts of Steve. She had no idea if Matt was actually Daredevil as all the papers said, but he sure was a daredevil lawyer. They had dug up legal challenges that would drop Johnny Cochran's jaw. That was sucked right out of her mind, though, when she heard Steve's voice ring clearly over the television.

"The Avengers do not fight their battles in the courtroom." He said as she pushed her way past her co-workers, and as she heard the next question he was asked she held her breath.

Captain America didn't even seem to hesitate.

"I cannot speak for the administration. I am not a representative of the administration. I have always strived to be a representative of the American people, the American Dream. The Presidential administration is the chosen chief executive of the American people that I serve. The question that all those giving credence to these rumors must ask themselves is this: would the President of the United States conspire against the American Dream, or the cause of justice that the Avengers represent?"

Then he turned his back, and fought his way through the crowd of shouting reporters. They parted like the red sea. They probably couldn't have stopped him even if they tried. He had not answered the reporter's question. Instead, he had asked another question. But the purpose of that question was not lost on Bernie at all. The President had tried to throw the Avengers away, and Captain America had just thrown a major league burr under the Texan's saddle. It was politics, but it was politics Steve's way. The direct way. The uncompromising way. The way that told everyone that would appose him that they had gone to war with the wrong man.

"You go get them, Steve." Bernie said with a laugh, and her co workers laughed with her.

Bernie smiled and looked at the man she loved, and wondered how she could have ever left him behind.

* * *

By the time that Steve arrived at Avenger mansion Edwin Jarvis was ready for war. The Butler had the plan and organize appropriate billets for 40 guests, and he was tearing into the support staff over every little detail. The ladies' chambers and the gentlemen's chambers were to be a proper distance apart and were to be in no case adjacent. The dividing line was to be the drawing room, and propriety insisted that the path to the bathing facilities were to in no way encroach upon the gentlemen's chambers. Security was to be tightened, as more than one personage in attendance was an officially recognized head of state. In addition the kitchen staff was to be doubled to provide appropriate meals for the swelling mass of visitors. Hanger and garage space was to be maximized, for RSVP was in this case not at all possible.

"Jarvis." Cap interjected as he was giving Security Chief Michael O'Brien a cultured tongue lashing.

"Yes sir?"

"I hate to interrupt, but has everyone arrived yet?"

"Everyone has arrived that was able to respond to the call, sir." Jarvis said "The Fantastic Four are unfortunately off world at the moment and the Defenders have evidently skipped to a different dimension, taking Hulk, Namor, and Hellcat with them."

"Total roll call minus six?" Cap asked.

"Yes sir."

"Not bad turnout at all. Carry on, Jarvis." Cap said, and the butler turned his attention back to the fidgeting support staff.

Cap smiled at the man's thoroughness as he strolled past the chaos, but nothing prepared him for the chaos that was waiting on the other side of the drawing room door. It was almost wall to wall Avengers. There were few times in the Avengers history when assemblages of this size were necessary, and it took his breath away every time that he saw it. The conversation had been so loud that he could hear it down the hallway. The gang was all there, settling down into little groups. There was a huge scrum around Hank McCoy as the Beast cut up and bounced off the walls. Hank looked a little different, but inside he was still the same old Hank. Another group was watching Wonder-man and Hercules Arm wrestle. Hercules was yawning and didn't even have his weight planted right, but he was still holding Simon at bay. Cap wondered when he was going to put him through the table.

"Cap!" Vance Astrovik almost yelped as he came through the door. The telekinetic mutant known as Justice always seemed to be beaming with admiration whenever he saw him, and his exclamation got everybody's attention.

All eyes turned to him, and the racket died down. The only sound was the movement of machine-man's gears as he extended his neck for a better view of the super soldier.

"Welcome to the mansion everybody." Cap said sternly, brimming with command presence "I wish that it could be under better circumstances, but it is good to see you all. You all know why we are here, and you all know what we have to do. I don't have to tell you this, because all of you know what it means to be an Avenger. If you didn't, you wouldn't be here. Some of you have personal lives that keep you from the fold, and some of you a members of other heroic teams of individuals. Still you are here, because you understand what it means to be an Avenger. Separately, we are formidable, but together we are invincible. That is what the forces that are arrayed against us fail to understand."

Sometimes when he spoke like this and looked out over the enraptured faces it was almost as if he was not thinking about what he was saying. Like he was not speaking at all, but _feeling, _and the words just rolled off his tongue. Many throughout the years had maligned his propensity for giving speeches, but no one who had ever heard one would ever forget it. He had the command of a room full of legendary heroes, and he never forgot that fact. He never spoke down to them. He never "commanded" them as he had seen so many failed leaders do throughout the years. He appealed to their higher being, to that part of themselves that was within us all. That spirit that would not be denied. The spirit that he had seen in the eyes of cowards and heroes alike. In the eyes of the wounded and the dying. It was a singular gift that had not been given to him not by the super soldier serum, but - as he sometimes admitted in private moments - as a legacy of his father. The son of a frustrated writer in love with words.

Cap spoke to a few members privately after he gave his rabble rousing speech. Hank and Jan seemed to be keeping their distance from one another, but when he talked to them separately it seemed as if nothing was bothering them. Hank told him the good news about Rachel, and Cap insisted that he would visit her as soon as visiting hours began first thing tomorrow. Janet seemed to be absolutely glowing. Perhaps they were just mingling. A few of the Avengers that he had not seen in a while had a variety of amusing reactions. Firebird seemed flustered and accidentally began speaking to him in Spanish. She was even more flustered when he responded in fluent Spanish. Hercules lifted him like a rag doll and almost crushed a few ribs in his manly embrace. Sometimes it seemed that the Olympian had not progressed beyond the ancient Greek era, where men were men and the only thing that could separate the men from the boys was a crowbar. USAgent looked like he always looked: like he wanted to punch him. He offered him a rare handshake, however, and mumbled words of grudging respect. Crystal of the Inhumans hugged him and then would not let go for some reason. Quicksilver glowered nearby, his expression reminding Steve of the Mutant's father. As he gently extracted himself from her embrace Crystal said that she knew what he had to be going through, and that he was so brave. He realized that she was talking about Rachel.

Even the Avengers had loners, and a few of those loners were on the edges of the conversations. It was these that Cap most wanted to approach. Not only to thank them for showing up but to get a feel for what they thought of the entire situation. Moon Knight was standing in a corner all alone, pointedly ignoring Tigra's longing glances in his direction. When Cap approached him he was impressed, as he always was, but the man's almost military professionalism. It was a pity that he had never had the chance to work with him. He was a fixture of the west coast branch and it seemed that he only saw him when Thanos or some similar cosmic badass came to take on all of Earth's heroes. Even though he had been forced to resign at one time he had still come, and Cap let him know how much that meant to him. He tried to introduce him to another loner, Moondragon. The black and silver wraith and the bald telepath (and self-styled goddess) simply looked at each other like they were road kill. Cap felt like he had made a faux paux, and quickly retreated.

"How's it hangin' Cap?" Spider man asked him from the ceiling.

He looked lonely without Julia Carpenter up there to keep him company. Ever since Julia lost her spider powers (through events even less clear then how she actually acquired them) she had to be the only Avenger in history to happily live her life as a soccer mom. Cap smiled at Spider-man's witticism, and his thick Queens accent. He knew that Spider-man did not feel comfortable as an Avenger. He had turned down multiple invitations to join and tried to quit twice. He was one of New York's best known heroes, but to Cap his sometimes infuriating comments and antisocial behavior seemed to mask a deep insecurity. Despite that, he thought that he knew the man well enough to know that he did deserve to be an Avenger. Whether he realized it or not.

"Do you really want the answer to that question, son?" Cap asked with a smirk.

"Hey now! I just wanted to thank you! All through the elections the press was so busy ganging up on you that they almost forgot about little ol' me… well, except for JJJ of course."

"How did your lawsuit go? I heard that Jennifer was representing you." Cap asked.

"About as well as my attempt to cash that check from NBC for my Letterman appearance." Spidey grumbled "I knew that I should have hired Matt Murdock."

From a nearby crowd that included Wonder man and Starfox, She-hulk gave him a withering glance.

Spidey slid down a little on his web line to whisper to Cap.

"If looks could kill I'd be dead right now, wouldn't I?" he confided.

"Maybe." Cap said, feeling that impossible lightheartedness that Spider-man always brought to the situation "Just step lightly, son, so that you can tell who's toes you're stepping on."

"Hey! When do we eat?" Spidey asked loudly as Cap walked off, shaking his head.

As he ran the gauntlet he finally saw the man that he most wanted to see. He was an outsider too. Some would say that he was the ultimate outsider. As much a man out of time as him, but for the fact that he wasn't a man at all. There were few men who understood his sense of dislocation, but he was one of them. Perhaps Namor had an inkling as well, but if there was one being who understood perfectly it was the original Human Torch. He was leaning quietly against the wall, wearing a white business suit instead of his trademark red tights. As he drew closer he could hear him whistling a Louis Armstrong tune. As many years as he had known him, the Android known as Nicholas Hammond could always surprise him.

"You know what day it is?" Cap asked.

"Yes, but I won't be going this year. I… can't face them again." The torch said with a hint of shame "Every time I see their faces… I see all the others. How can you bear it, Steve?"

"I don't know. I suppose that I see the faces whether I go or not." Cap admitted, then looked his old friend right in the eye "Is there anything that I can do to change your mind?"

Hammond shook his head "I'm afraid not. I don't even know why you invited me to this exalted assembly. My powers have faded, and I am hardly one of earth's mightiest these days."

"You are an Avenger." Cap said "Semi-retired, but shouldn't we all be?"

"Maybe Nick can go with you this year." The Torch offered "That is if he isn't busy invading sovereign nations or immolating them from above."

Cap shook his head and smiled at the thought "Maybe this is just fate's way of telling me that I should invite the person I have in mind."

* * *

The plan of action for the next day had been decided. The Avengers would take their grievances to the commission on Superhuman activities. The mansion, meanwhile, would become the worlds biggest slumber party. Cap had another commitment. A solemn commitment, and an invitation he could not refuse. Because it was Nov 11th. That might not mean anything to most people, but it meant a lot to him. He hoped that Bernie would understand. He knocked on her door and waited for the answer. He was dressed in street clothes, as there was no cause to go in costume this year. After all, the world knew that Captain America was Steve Rogers. It was time for them to learn who Steve Rogers was. He held his breath as Bernie answered the door, because he had not seen her since the night that they made love. He was as nervous as a teenager, and that made him feel ridiculous.

He was rewarded by a look of surprise on Bernie's face as she opened the door. She saw Steve dressed in an attractive blue business suit with a red tie. Tony had said that it was a "Power tie" but he wore it mostly because it was in tune with his usual color scheme. Her eye was drawn to the huge bouquet of roses. It was romantic, and it was spontaneous. She had known Steve to be one or the other, but rarely both She was speechless.

"Hello Bernie." Steve said with a nervous smile.

Bernie put her hand over her mouth and tried not to cry. She ended up laughing.

Steve was not offended, and in fact laughed with her.

"Can I come in?" Steve asked.

"Come on in." Bernie said through her laughter, pulling him in by his arm.

Bernie had just gotten back from work, a late night at the office, and was sporting a look that could only be described as "mussed up sex exec." It made Steve smile. They stood there in the doorway for a minute, Steve looking at Bernie and Bernie looking self conscious. Then they kissed, deeply and comfortably. It was an odd way to begin a date, and usually the proper way to end one. But they knew, deep in their heart, that their romance was anything but conventional. Sometimes there were moments that just happened, and all that you could do was roll with them. If absence made the heart grow fonder, their hearts had the time and distance to grow very fond indeed.

* * *

"Where are we going?" Bernie asked as they walked. It was a chilly night so they both were gloved and were wearing overcoats and scarves.

"To see some old friends." Steve said, offering his arm like a proper gentleman "Its not far to walk."

"I thought that I'd met both your friends." Bernie teased him.

Steve put his arm around her and give her a little hug.

"Do you know what day it is?" Steve asked back.

"November 11th?" Bernie said without even looking at the digital read-out on her watch.

"Armistice day." Steve said.

"Armistice… oh, Veteran's day." Bernie said. "It seemed like everyone had a day off today but me… I guess that's the bad thing about being self-employed."

"I guess that it will always be Armistice day to me." Steve said. "I have a tradition to uphold. It is the one commitment I've managed to keep every year ever since the Avengers found me. I have had to go in uniform every year, but since I'm public now I thought that I'd go in civilian clothes for a change. The invitation is for two, so I thought you'd like to come along."

"So where are we going again?" Bernie asked in a cheeky tone.

Steve laughed "We're already here." He said as he pointed to the sign.

Bernie looked up and was startled when she saw the name _Veterans of Foreign Wars post # 19 _illuminated in a soft white light. She must have walked by it a hundred times and never given it a second glance. It was a VFW civic center, and outside was a contingent of official greeters. All were men and women with salt-and-pepper hair above their big smiles. Bundled against the cold but looking like they could stand there forever if they needed to.

"Welcome young man!" one middle aged man said "Let me guess… Persian Gulf?"

"World War II." Steve said.

The man laughed until the woman next to him nudged him and whispered in his ear. His eyes widened and he straightened up immediately.

"Cap!" He almost stammered "I didn't recognize you."

"Don't worry about it, sir." Cap said, patting him in the shoulder "I did wear a mask for 60 years. I can't expect everybody to recognize me in one."

The man smiled and shook his hand. Bernie could not believe the look of admiration and respect that he got from the man. Even though he seemed older than Steve, and Steve had called him "sir" in deference to his age, he couldn't have been born before the end of the Second World War. He had probably lived all his life knowing the legend of Captain America, but this might have been his first opportunity to meet the man.

The entrance into the hall was like being swept though a wave of shaking hands, admiring faces, profuse blessings and gentlemanly introductions from Steve. She was overwhelmed, but tried to be a trooper about it. There were very few of the younger vets. Inside the hall were very old men and women that greeted Steve like he was indeed the oldest of old friends. Some sadly did not speak at all, but simply grasped his hand and stared at him with puzzled glances. She could tell that they were not all there, and were usually accompanied by their children and grandchildren. One of the older women, who wore a pin declaring her an original member of the WAAC, closed her grasp on his and would not let go. She saw a tear in the corner of Steve's eye as her grandson gently removed her shaking hand for her, gently murmuring to her. Whatever deep sorrow clenched at his insides at that moment, Steve sniffled it back and continued his rounds through the crowd. Every so often a familiar face struck him, and they would embrace instead of shake hands. At that moment she didn't know what to feel about Steve sharing this part of his life with her. It was as if he was opening up a box and showing something to her so vastly precious and private that she couldn't believe that such a thing could exist.

The banquet was a lovely affair, complete with a live Jazz band and a steak dinner. It seemed as if the VFW had spared no expense for the shindig. Steve was the guest of honor, as he must have been every year. He was to give the keynote address. Awards had been given out for community service and other achievements in the previous year, a prayer had been said for the troops currently serving overseas, and a roll call of New York's fallen troops had been followed by a moment of silence. Then Steve had been called to the podium, and Bernie patted him gently on the hand as he got up. He smiled back at her before he turned to go. She was very deeply in love with him at that moment.

Steve stepped to the podium to tremendous applause, took a breath, and began speaking the moment that the applause died down.

"The last couple of years have really been something, haven't they?" He said into the microphone, and the crowd murmured its assent.

"Tonight I stand before you as much as Steve Rogers as Captain America. When I think about what has been happening in the nation and the world I see how much things have changed since the first time I took up arms for my country. I think about how much more has been asked of the United States armed forces than was asked in my time, and yet how much less seems to be expected by the greater part of the nation. I see how divided we have become over this last year, after coming together ever so briefly in the wake of the events of 2001. Yet, looking out at all of you, I am also comforted that there are some things that will never change. There will always be evil to fight. Dictators, fascism, intolerance, fundamentalist regimes, and the simple darkest desires of the human heart. There will always be those that prey on others, but looking out over all of you I know that there will always be those that rise up to challenge those predators in one unified voice. People have often called me a super hero. I have never thought of myself as one. Because I have walked with heroes, lived with them, marched with them, and bled with them. I think that if there was a such thing as a super hero, they all qualify."

Steve got silent for a moment, and looked directly at Bernie. He smiled at her and looked over the crowd, clearing his throat before continuing.

"I would like to tell you all something deeply personal tonight. I know that there are a couple of you that know a little of this story, because you were there. I also know that this will be surprising to you, because I have shared so little of my experiences with you. Like many of you, and many others who have seen war, I have believed that silence is the best policy in these matters. Recently I have been shown that the silence was killing me, a little every day. Now, if you would permit me, I would tell you all a little of those darkest days of my life. The days that taught me what true heroism really was. It was January of 1942. My brother Frank had just died alongside his brothers on the Arizona at Pearl Harbor, and the Japanese had destroyed the entire pacific fleet. The Nation had just learned that it was at war, and I was called to the office of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I would finally get the opportunity to fight the enemies of our nation, but it was in the last place that I would expect…"

* * *

Steve had never been so nervous in his life.

On one side of him was Major General Chester Phillips, looking somewhat constipated even though he had just had a second star pinned on his uniform. On the other side was General George Marshall, the Chief of Staff of the US Army, who he had just met for the first time. The old man regarded him with a kind, almost grandfatherly demeanor. Standing between them in his Class A uniform, Steve Rogers felt two feet tall. Maybe if he had come dressed as Captain America he would not feel this way, but everyone had insisted that would have created too much of a scene. After Pearl Harbor, the press was more mad for Captain America than ever. This was not meant to be a public meeting. The three of them stood staring at the door to the oval office, waiting for it to open. Back in Basic Training a Drill Instructor had hissed an ominous warning into his face.

"I'm gonna take you to the White House if you don't straighten up, Rogers" the NCO hissed "You're gonna meet the President."

It looked like, two years later, that threat was finally coming to fruition.

"Would it do any good if I said I was sorry again, sir?" Steve whispered to General Phillips.

"You have nothing to apologize for, Rogers." The ornery General grunted "You did a good thing at Pearl, just like I did a good thing recruiting you in the first place. This is just where you get to figure out a truth of the Army that I figured out a long time ago."

"What is that, Sir?"

"No good deed goes unpunished."

Then the door opened, and the Secretary of War waved them in.

The three of them marched in, Steve following a step behind General Marshall's left heel at the position of honor. General Phillips closed the door behind them and stood fast by it. General Marshall saluted the President, and Steve followed suit, but he didn't hear the words that Marshall was saying. He was too fixated on the man before him. He looked tired. He looked harried. He looked like a weak old man. All of the accouterments were there; the eyeglasses and the cigarette holder, but he looked very little like the pictures he had seen of the man. There were dark circles under his eyes and deep lines in his face. He had been president for almost 10 years, and any man who had done two full terms would tell you that was 10 too many. But there was something about him that spoke volumes, and when their eyes met he could see a mischievous smile light up the President's face. As much as he wanted to maintain his stern military bearing, he could not help but smile back.

"So this is the hero that I've heard so much about!" That familiar, treasured voice emitted from the old man as he regarded Steve Rogers. "You know how much I love all this Military rigmarole, but would it pain you terribly if I were to shake the young man's hand?"

Steve was almost numb as General Marshall gave him the nod and stepped back. He felt his feet take a few stiff steps forward and saw his hand take the one offered by President Roosevelt. His grip was curiously strong. The President did not stand, but Steve would not give this a thought until years later.

"I just wanted to thank you for all that you have done for this nation, and let you know that you and your young partner represent the greatest ideals that our country stands for. I also want to you know that great things will be asked of you in the days ahead, and I have every confidence that you will be equal to the task."

"Thank you, sir." Was all that Steve could think of to say in return. "I hope that I prove worthy of that trust, Mr. President."

"You already have, son." The President said. "Moving along, I do have a token of gratitude from the nation, and one that I hope you will find useful in your continuing mission."

It was the greatest present that Steve ever received, and he still had it to this day. FDR reached under his desk and pulled out the familiar star spangled shield that we have come to know: Three concentric circles that made a bulls eye out of a five pointed star at its center. It was freshly painted and was highly shined. Even through countless years and countless coats of paint the metal had never lost its luster.

"This disk of metal was fashioned by a metalthurgest that was experimenting to create a more durable metal for military use. It seems he made a rather spectacular and irreparable mistake one evening and this disk was the result. When asked why he formed the metal into a disk I believe he said that it seemed like a good idea at the time. This disk, as it happens, is completely and totally indestructible. It cannot be shaped into any other form and nothing that we can must has so much as put a scratch in it. The process that created it cannot be duplicated, so it is unique… just like you. I cannot think of a better man to bear this in defense of the nation." FDR said all of this with his smile never faltering.

Steve took the indestructible shield from the hands of the President with a slow, anxious gasp, but just as soon as it was in his hand he knew that it was something special. It was much lighter than it should have been given its size. It was almost as if the properties of mass and density as we knew them did not apply to it, for nothing that was that light should have been as solid as it was. As he hoisted it on his arm, he felt almost as invulnerable as the President purported the disk to be.

"Thank you, Mr. President." Cap said, holding himself with pride.

"General Marshall will fill you in on the specifics of the new assignment that you have heard about already, son. I just wanted to have the opportunity to thank you on behalf of the American people. Go get them, lad, and give them what for."

The soldiers all saluted, knowing an exit line when they heard one.

"Godspeed." FDR said, returning the salute.

General Marshall briefed Steve on his change of assignment in a concise manner, asking him questions at appropriate times but not droning on. He seemed to be a man who understood the value of time, and that it was of the essence. Throughout the entire briefing a white house attaché tried in vain to cram the indestructible shield Roosevelt gave him into a briefcase. It wouldn't do, after all, to have anyone see the disc leaving the White House. At the end of the briefing Marshall got quiet for a moment, but it was a thoughtful silence for a thoughtful man. At last, he said what was on his mind.

"I understand that you lost a brother at Pearl Harbor." General Marshall said to him in a gentle, sophisticated voice as Steve stood at attention.

"Yes sir."

"You have my condolences, and the thanks of a grateful nation. I also understand that you were… his only living relative."

"Yes sir. It was only the two of us."

"I know exactly how you feel. I lost a brother, too. In this war too many brothers are going to be lost. It is a tragedy of the worst sort, but you must put it behind you, son. You must put it behind you and do what you must. Your brother would want that, Captain."

"They are all my brothers, sir." Steve said "All those men out there are my brothers, and I am going to protect them. I am going to inspire them, and I am going to show them the way to victory." Steve said with unshakeable confidence.

"A bold statement for a bold man." General Marshall said with a smile "That is good. Fortune favors the bold. Remember that for me, won't you Captain?"

"Yes sir."

General Marshall held out his hand, and Steve Rogers shook it. The attaché gave him the strangely bulging briefcase and he saluted the Chief of Staff.

"Good Luck, Captain Rogers." General Marshall said "This is our darkest hour, and we are all depending on you."

As General Phillips and Steve left the White House, the super soldier turned to the cantankerous senior officer and saw an expression on his face that was almost wistful.

"What's going to become of you, Sir?" Steve asked, realizing that the Chief of Staff had not outlined any plan for General Phillips.

"Like I said, son… no good deed goes unpunished. I just got promoted out of a job. Its kind of ironic, actually. After the Great War they didn't want all us hard-charging war horses around anymore. They busted me down to lieutenant trying to get me to get out of uniform. Then they took me away from my troops and stuck me behind a desk. Now that the Japanese dropped a bomb on their heads all that's changed. Now they need me to lead a division. I'm going to serve under Patton and Bradley in the 3rd Army. My old bones are going to Africa to play with Rommel." The General said, turning to him with a wry grin.

"I guess that the AG will have to get along without you, sir." Steve said with the same grin.

"Yes. I guess they just will." General Phillips said "Give Douglas my regards when you see him. That old coot's gonna have his hands full with you."

* * *

Steve had learned many things in his life, but one lesson that he learned that night in Burma was that the first impression was the lasting impression.

This was a night and a meeting that few knew about and even fewer would know as the years went on. The night that Captain America and Douglas Macarthur came face to face for the first time. Steve had never seen a General like this, but in that they were even for the General had never seen a Captain like Steve Rogers. Macarthur was wearing his leather jacket and sunglasses, smoking a corn cob pipe. Captain America was wearing his full star spangled garb - slightly modified with a chain mail sleeve to protect his neck - and carrying the invulnerable shield given him by the President of the United States. Both had been recognized as the last, best hope to save the Philippine Archipelago from the depredations of the Japanese, who would use the islands to launch and assault across the pacific and beyond. Both had a nearly legendary reputation that preceded them. Both of them had a subordinate at their left heel looking extremely uncomfortable; it just happened that Steve's was a 15 year old boy in red tights and Macarthur's was a Brigadier General that was sweating heavily.

It was hate at first sight.

"I'm not going to beat around the bush with you, Captain." Macarthur said, returning Steve's salute with a total lack of enthusiasm. "I didn't ask for you under my command, and I don't want you here. You're Chester Phillips' boy, and I have no interest in nursing a viper in my breast. I have heard all the stories about your exploits, and I am not impressed. You violated orders going to France, you violated orders going to Pearl, and the rest of the time it seems like you just write your own orders. I have no place in my command for an officer that does not observe the simplest regulations of military protocol."

At least he didn't sugar coat it.

"Sir, I can tell already that it will be a pleasure to serve under you." Cap said.

"Don't get used to it, Captain." Macarthur almost snarled "I've already had my offices type up your reassignment orders. I hear that there is a Colonel Donovan who is most interested in your services. I could care less. If it wasn't for our _distinguished _President you wouldn't even be here. I would have you back home flexing your muscles for recruitment pictures so that we could get some real soldiers in here. For now, we are stuck together. Try to stay out of the way and not get too many of my soldiers killed. If you expect a company to command, forget it. Just visit the camps and keep the morale up. If a candy-striper could do it, I assume that you must be at least as capable."

Macarthur turned on his heel without even waiting for a salute and stormed out of the tent. Captain America did his best not to quake with rage. In all his time in uniform he had never been faced with such contempt. The worst part about it was that he had obviously done something to offend the sensibilities of the General. He could not deny that he had twice ignored orders. He could not deny that he was a maverick, and he could not deny that General Phillips had been his sponsor and his mentor from the day he entered the service. But that did not mean that the General had the right to demean him and dismiss the good that he had done. Douglas Macarthur had never faced the Red Skull or Master Man. The General had never brought so much as a single fifth columnist to justice. The General had never, and in all likelihood would never, punch Adolph Hitler in the face.

"What a jerk." Bucky said after a moment of silence, making Steve laugh.

"That's a General you're talking about, Buck." Steve said through his laughter.

"Does that make him a jerk in general?" Bucky asked. It was the treasure of youth that they could say whatever they want.

Bucky had been very upset with Steve ever since the incident in the hanger, and had even toyed with the thought of hanging up his Bucky uniform and staying at Camp Leleigh. They had discussed it, though, and Steve had convinced him that going to the Pacific without him would be like going without his right arm. Bucky had agreed to come, but on the stipulation that Steve never take unreasonable actions to exclude him from danger again. The young man wanted to be his true partner, sharing all the danger if it came to that. Steve agreed to it, and they never discussed the issue again. They both know that it was a war now, but neither of them knew what a real war was. They were about to find out.

* * *

The Japanese had entered Manila on Jan 2nd 1942, and by the 16th Macarthur had needed to withdraw the US/Philippine troops to the Bataan Peninsula. It was in those first days, with heavy US losses at the front, that Captain America and Bucky first saw war face to face.

"Don't give up!" Steve yelled at a group of Infantry that had been holding the line against the Japanese. They were huddled against a hasty fighting position of piled sandbags amidst the stinking grasses of the marshland that they had hoped that the Japanese would be reluctant to fight through. They had been wrong. "We're gonna win this one."

"Look! Its Cap!" He heard one young soldier holler.

"The Japs are in trouble now!" Another yelled.

Buck was manning a browning heavy machine gun, laying down covering fire as Steve advanced on the Japanese position. Bullets showered off of his shield in a whirlwind of sparks as he charged forth. He didn't look back, but kept his eyes focused forward. Macarthur had been determined to keep him back at the camp entertaining the troops like a USO performer, but if he thought that the super soldier was going to stand for that he had another thing coming. Cap and Bucky had crept out of the camp in the dead of night. They had not been able to stand the continuing trickle of wounded into the camp and the sounds of gunfire in the hills. Unlike the last time Cap had slipped the leash the Army put on him, they had agreed that they would hang together this time if it came to that. The arrived at the front lines at the crack of dawn, just when the Japanese had renewed their assault.

Steve had gone over this moment in his mind a million times since Pearl Harbor. The faceless, inhuman creatures who killed his brother were just on the other side of the stinking high grasses, shooting bullets that whizzed through the haze of mosquitoes. It would have taken an Olympic sprinter at least 1 minute and 30 seconds to sprint across the divide between the two clashing fronts. It would have taken a soldier what seemed to be an eternity of three second runs diving for whatever cover they could find. It took Captain America 30 seconds, never stopping. A wing was shot off the right side of his mask. A chunk was shot out of his left boot. A round of flak skipped of his chain mailed shoulder. He didn't even flinch. He saw the enemy huddled behind fallen trees and stumps, and instead of huddling to ground as a good infantryman would he leapt into the air. It was the most spectacular leap that the Japanese soldiers would ever see; nearly ten feet straight up and seeming to defy gravity. He could see the epicanthic folds of their eyes widen to almost Caucasian proportions.

He came down on them like a ton of bricks.

A soldier tried to bayonet him, but his shield snapped the rifle in half. As another tried to reload a rifle a big red boot caved in his face. Another tried to stab him with a combat knife and he broke his arm. Another tried to choke him from behind and he broke his ribs. One shot at him and he stepped aside, causing him to shoot another troop. An officer howled and came at him with a katana held high, but the sword skipped off of the shield and Cap punched him in the throat. Another face smashed into a tree. Another fist pulping a face. A shield smashing a wrist, a boot crushing a throat. A fist cracking a skull. It erupted into a blur of incomprehensible violence as red rage washed through Steve like the mid afternoon tide. From Bucky's perspective, from behind the machine gun, it looked like the Tasmanian devil was tearing through the wood line, throwing Japanese in every direction.

A howl went up through the line of American Soldiers, and when Cap turned around he had to pull his punch, because looking at him was an American soldier. The young man was quaking a gasping, pale as a sheet. A huge red blotch was on his fatigues and he croaked out to him, grasping him with a bloody hand.

"I made it.. Cap…" The young soldier gasped "Was hard to keep up… but I made it… just point me at them…" and then he collapsed.

Without even thinking Cap fell to his knees and pulled the Soldier's field dressing, just as he had been trained to do. He had no idea why the man had followed him. He had a sucking chest wound, and his lung had collapsed. If he didn't get him to a medic he was going to die. That was when he saw. That was when he realized that the moaning and screaming he was hearing wasn't just coming from the fallen Japanese all around him or the ones retreating from the woodline to their fallback position. In the open field he had charged through, hundreds of American GIs lay dead and dying, gunned down as they charged like Picket's advance.

"Good Lord." Cap said, looking out over the carnage.

The light just might have saved his life. The sun was coming from the east, and cast a shadow over his shoulder of the Japanese soldier with the sword held high. He would have reacted before the sword came down, but a pistol shot rang out and the shadow behind him dropped like a shadow puppet with his strings cut. He turned to see a dead Japanese soldier who had picked up his officer's sword, body still twitching and blood rushing from the hole in his head. He was just a kid. He couldn't have been older than Bucky, but he had the courage to stay and fight while the rest of his regiment had cut and ran. As his head snapped the other direction he saw a man with captain's bars and a five o' clock shadow leaning against a tree. One arm hung limp, dripping with blood.

"Got em…" the man said with a grimace "I got the bastard, didn't I Cap?"

The young soldier in Cap's arms was dead. His eyes looked up to him as glassy as a doll on a toy store shelf. Steve couldn't move, felt like he couldn't breathe, as the Captain in the tattered fatigues limped over to him and collapsed to his knees next to him. They both looked over the dead and dying in the field. Medics rushed from place to place. Screams and curses split the air. A few gunshots reported as the Infantryman shot at the retreating Japanese. A Sergeant walked around with a look on his face like he had forgotten his keys. When he turned they saw that the left side of his skull was gone, exposing purple chunks that must have been his brains. Another soldier grabbed him and forced him to sit down.

"Did you… did you order them to charge?" Cap asked, short of breath.

"No." The Captain moaned "They followed you."

A single tear dropped onto the dead soldier's face.

* * *

As Steve looked out over the gathering of Veterans, there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

"By the end of January Macarthur had been recalled to Australia, to take over the Pacific Theater of War. I was there when he made his famous proclamation that he would return. The soldiers that I fought beside on the Bataan peninsula stayed, and I stayed with them. As Macarthur promised, orders showed up for me to report to Colonel Donovan and a new outfit they called the OSS. I threw those orders down a latrine in Corrigegidor. As the summer continued and the casualties mounted I got news that the Human Torch and the Sub Mariner had joined forces to fight the Japanese alongside the US Navy. I was Army, so I stayed where I was. There is a lot of talk in the news media today about how many troops we are losing overseas in the war on terror. They have every right to report this, for the loss of so much as a single soldier is too much. By the end of that summer in the Philippines, we had lost more than 44,000 American service members. To this day, I can still hardly comprehend it. Even though I saw it with my own eyes."

Steve was silent again for a moment, and looked at Bernie. She was wiping at the mascara and eye shadow that her tears had melted. He smiled at her and she smiled weakly back. It was taking all of his iron will to hold back his tears.

"I stayed in the Pacific. A few of you might have seen me in the newsreels during that time. A few others might have been beside me there. Those of you that were, I don't need to tell you any more than you already know. I didn't leave the Philippines until General Wainwright surrendered Corrigegidor. I had to sneak off the peninsula like a thief in the night, while 78,000 US troops were captured and more than 80,000 troops were forced on the Bataan death march." Steve's voice faltered, the memories overwhelming him "I don't know if my words are sufficient to paint a portrait of how bleak a time it was. How dark an hour that was for all of us. After Pearl Harbor it was defeat after defeat after defeat. We lost again and again. Wake Island. The Solomon islands. The Philippines. A series of Alamo-like last stands where we had to leave behind the people of those Pacific Islands to an enemy with a documented history of barbarism. Rape, torture, maiming of young men so that they could not grow to fight them. 1942 was a year of hell, but it was a year where the fire of war forged and hardened our nation into the one that would stand triumphant at the end."

Steve took in a deep breath, and steadied himself. It seemed as he had been talking for a long time, but every face in the house was enthralled and enraptured by what he had said.

"On Guadalcanal… I got to pay them back. At Midway, the Torch and Namor handed them a taste of defeat. Once we had tasted victory we believed it was possible, and belief was all that we needed to carry us the rest of the way. Even in the darkest hour that we have ever faced, there has always been hope. That hope is you, and the ones to you left and right that refused to stand by while your nation needed you. All that I can do is give you my thanks for all that you have done. Give you my thanks for all that you have sacrificed. God bless all of you, and God bless America."

The applause was thunderous. Even the oldest, most arthritic hands pounded together beneath faces lined with the weight of choices made decades ago. Faces that hadn't always had a choice. Steve stepped down from the podium and walked back to his table, where Bernie was waiting. She stood up and took him in her arms. The crowd, as it is said, went wild.

* * *

"So tomorrow is the big day, huh?" Bernie asked as they walked out the exit doors of the VFW hall.

"Yes." Steve said "The Commission on Superhuman Affairs. We lost at the UN, but we can't afford to lose there."

"I know. I've been doing all the paperwork." Bernie laughed, blowing a stray hair out of her face as they walked.

"I have no doubt that they will approve us. They can't afford not to. The world needs the Avengers. I thought that the events of the past few years had proven that, but some people still need to be convinced."

"Why did you invite me?" Bernie asked as they walked away from the banquet. "That seemed like such a special moment… such a special crowd… I almost felt out of place."

Steve thought about it for a moment, considering his answer.

"I invited you because I want you to be a part of my life." Steve said softly, turning to face her "I want you to feel like you have a place in my life. An important one. The past is the past, and it will always be with me. I just want you to know that I haven't forgotten the present, or taken my eye off the future."

"What are you saying, Mr. Rogers?" Bernie asked coyly.

"It would be easy, with all the crazy things going on, to just let the chips fall where they may. That would be the wrong answer. There has never been a good time for us. There has never been a time that was just right. Sara understood that, and I should have understood it too."

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"Well, you got to ask last time. I guess that it is my turn." Steve said, getting to one knee in front of a statue of Franklin Roosevelt. He pulled out a box that he had hidden in his Jacket pocket. "After all, I did keep this thing for all these years."

Bernie couldn't breathe. Even jaded New Yorkers stopped in their tracks to look at the unfolding scene. He flipped up the lid of the box to reveal their old engagement ring.

"Bernadette Rosenthal, will you marry me?" Steve asked.

**Next: Divisions**

**_What is the agenda of the Commission on Superhuman Activities, and how will this affect the Avengers? Can Steve's personal life take any more twists and turns? What does all this have to do with the machinations of the Crimson Cowl? Tune in next week, True Believers!_**


	13. Divisions

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Chapter Eleven: Divisions**

The White House was surrounded by a media swarm that could not be believed, but none of them were being allowed in the gate. It had been enough of a spectacle when Tony Stark's private 747 had landed at Dulles Airport and began spewing forth Avengers. The Staff in the West Wing shook their heads as they looked out into a sea of flashbulbs, surmising that an Avenger must have just peeked out the window. No one inside the building was not actually worried, but they were anxious. With 40 Avengers in the White House, it might have been the most well protected building in the world. The Secret Service was not happy, but then again the Secret Service was never happy. The fact that the President had refused to permit the Service to screen and search the Avengers had been a sticking point that had been taken all the way to the Secretary of the Treasury. The Secret Service Security Detail was convinced that they needed to disarm the Avengers, especially in the case of those such as Hawkeye and Black Knight who actually carried deadly weapons. The man in the oval office, however, would not hear of it.

Captain America looked out over the assembly of heroes known as the Avengers from the Chairman's podium in the White House's press room. The White House staff had converted the room into a hasty convention center for the Avenger's use. They were all relaxed and at ease, waiting for the summons that would bring the founding members to the chambers of the Commission on Superhuman Activities. Whatever decision was reached in the upcoming conference with the President's Commission would have to be brought to a vote. The Avengers were unique in being a super team that practiced the democracy that they preached. If the majority of the Avengers did not accept the terms of the Commission, the Avengers would cease to exist as they had been known. They would either have to make the decision to disband or to continue as a vigilante organization. The Avengers as renegades were not a future that Captain America wanted to consider. The Assembled Avengers were one member short, for the traitor had been revealed in the dramatic events of the morning.

As he looked out over the Assembly with such pride, thinking over the events of the morning, Captain America had no idea that this would be among the most sad and difficult days of his long life.

* * *

8 hours earlier

Captain America and Iron Man had agreed that this was the time to do it, mostly because it was too much of a risk to allow the charade to continue for a moment longer. The prospect of traveling to Washington DC with a traitor in tow were simply too great. They had been watching the suspect, waiting for him to tip his hand, but it seemed that if he was going to make his move it would be in the White House. That was not acceptable. Tony and Steve called a joint conference of all the Avengers, keeping the topic under wraps. Even though they had deducted who the traitor was, it was still too hard to believe. He would have to be goaded into revealing himself. Even after he was unmasked they might need all the power of the Avengers to subdue him. If there was a time for it, the time was now.

"Are you sure about this, Steve?" Tony asked.

"I'm sure. Daredevil's sure. I hope that you're sure." Steve said.

Matt Murdock, as the Avengers' chief council, had come to the mansion ostensibly to brief the Assembly on the legal issues surrounding the events of the day. What he was really there for was to use his superior senses to find anything amiss with any of the Avengers. What he had discovered confirmed their suspicions. Now all that was left to do was the drawing room confrontation. Steve hoped that Tony has read up on his Agatha Christie.

"Avengers, the Captain and I have discovered something very disturbing." Tony said with difficulty " We have called you here to inform you that there is a traitor in this room. A spy in our midst."

The Avengers burst into a surprised uproar, looking at one another. Cap stepped forward and signaled with his hands for everyone to be quiet. He was not surprised that the suspect showed no reaction. If he was who they suspected, he must be expecting this.

"There is no cause for alarm, for we know who the traitor is." Cap said, looking to each of them. "There is no need to protest your innocence, because we know that not one single Avenger among you has betrayed us. The one we seek is not a traitor… but rather an imposter. An imposter that has infiltrated us for months. An imposter who has convinced us all. An imposter who has assured that every confrontation we have had with the Sinister Syndicate would end in failure. That they would know that we were coming. That they would be prepared for the members we would bring to bear."

As the Captain strode through the ranks, they parted before him. As he looked into each of their eyes he saw their confusion and bewilderment. Especially when he came to rest in front of one that they had trusted without question.

"Isn't that right, Thor?" Tony said from behind him.

The Thunder God said nothing.

"Your imitation was almost flawless." Cap said "Almost."

"Captain, how canst thou accuse the Son of Odin of this base deed!" Thor roared, causing Avengers to scatter left and right.

"I do not accuse the Son of Odin." Cap said without fear "Thor is in Asgard. He never returned from Asgard. You are an impostor."

"Thou hast no proof!" Thor blustered.

Captain America reached behind his shield and pulled forth a device that looked almost like a pistol. It was a white box with a gun-like grip sporting two flat red crystals instead of a gun barrel. Thor's eyes widened in recognition.

"This weapon once belonged to a Galadorian Spaceknight named Rom, devised to battle a race of shape changers known as the Dire Wraiths. It is in my possession compliments of Reed Richards, and he assures me it works on all shape changers. I'm sure that you recognize it and know what it can do." Captain America said in a calm, flat tone "You aren't going to make me use it, are you?"

Thor began quaking with rage, and his expression became one that they had never seen on the Son of Odin. It was obvious to all those standing about that Captain America was telling the truth. It did not stop them from gasping in surprise, however, when his features began to melt and change. As they coalesced into a familiar shape it was to no surprise that silence fell like a rock. It was also no surprise that Spider-man was the one to break the silence.

"We've been had." the web slinger said, smacking his forehead.

Standing before them was the Super Skrull, holding the Kree Universal devise and looking very, very angry.

"So you have discovered me at last." The Super Skrull growled "Fine. I was sick of imitating Thor and I was sick of filling in for the Syndicate's alleged 'Skrullian Spymaster.' Most of all I WAS SICK OF YOUR SANCTIMONIUS FACE!"

The Super Skrull reared back with the Universal Weapon, the mallet-like bludgeon flaring with energy eerily like Thor's hammer. Captain America pulled the trigger on Rom's weapon, and blasted the Skrull with a ray of red light. There was a sound something like a "pop" as the air rushed in to where the Super Skrull used to be. The weapon had banished him to Limbo.

"The Space Phantom and Immortus are going to be pissed." Tony said simply "How would you like to have that guy for a neighbor?"

"I'm sure that the Dire Wraiths will keep him company." Cap said, putting away the weapon.

The Avengers looked at the two of them, stunned at what they had just seen.

"Well…one less thing for us to worry about." The Beast said with a shrug of his shoulders.

* * *

Cap had taken Moondragon aside to speak with her, knowing that she knew what he was going to ask. He also knew that she knew that he knew that she knew. Dealing with telepaths was a leadership challenge to say the least. He had to speak to her privately because he had learned from experience that Heather Douglas did not respond well to criticism or verbal counseling in front of the other Avengers. From the time that she was very young (and in Steve's opinion, she still was very young) she had been treated like a goddess. Even in such a mighty assembly as this, in her own mind she still did not look around and see equals. When Starfox had arrived from Titan with the bald telepath in tow many of the heroes had complained about her inclusion as an Avenger. She was tolerated for the most part, but some of them were disgusted by her attitude and were very vocal about it. The Beast absolutely despised her, and She-Hulk always seemed one step away from a berserk rage when confronted by the telepath. She was highly unpopular and often ignored by the other Avengers. Heather felt the same way toward all of them. Her behavior toward Captain America, though, was totally different.

"Why didn't you tell us that Thor was an imposter?" Cap challenged her.

"I did not know." She surprised him by saying.

"How can that be possible?" He asked with no accusation.

"I've been trying to turn over a new leaf, as they say on this planet." Moondragon said "I don't pry into the thoughts of others as… often as I have in the past."

"So you did not pry into Thor's thoughts at any time since you arrived?"

"It was so very tempting." Moondragon admitted "You know I have coveted Thor as a mate. I thought that by treating him with more respect might change his low opinion of me."

Cap nodded.

"Are you reading my mind right now?" Cap asked Moondragon.

"No." She said.

"Read it." Cap demanded in a tone that indicated that it was not a request.

They looked at each other for a moment.

"I understand, Captain." Moondragon said. The tone of her voice was no longer the haughty goddess. She looked like a chastised child. She almost sounded her own age.

Cap walked away from her without another word.

Looking back at the time of the Super Skrull's masquerade, it was easy to kick himself for all the obvious clues. The Skull nerve gas that the Syndicate had used. The fact that the gas affected Thor before it affected him. The odd ways Thor behaved at times. If he had not been so caught up in his own personal problems he might have unearthed the mole months ago. He had not even realized that one was there until Daredevil told him. That showed how self involved and out of touch he had been. Thinking back to the night he was injured, the Skrull could have been the one that tipped off the Syndicate to where he and Hawkeye were going. The shape changer could even have been in the crowd. There was no telling how much damage the Skrull could have done if he had been one of the sharper knives in the drawer. Luckally he was little more than hired muscle, far more brawn than brains. The combined power of the Fantastic Four and Universal Weapon had been sufficient to falsify a great many of Thor's abilities. They could have also been used to duplicate any number of Avengers.

He still couldn't believe how easily they had been duped.

It was only the four of them, now. Jan, Hank, Tony, and himself. They were able representatives of Earth's Mightiest Heroes, but he was aware how much of the psychological edge Thor would have brought to the table. It was always hard to argue with a god, and even among the true and self styled deities that frequented the Avengers' roster Thor was one that personified nobility and grace. This would be a much harder day for his absence.

"Where are you, Thor?" Cap said, looking out over the White House lawn "What are we going to do without you?"

"We'll just have to do our best." the Black Widow said from behind him, startling Steve out of his thoughts.

The former Russian spy looked absolutely beautiful as always. She had turned in her gray tights some time ago for a leather body stocking that evoked her old costume. She had also grown her bright red hair out to an attractive length. It always took all of Steve's self control not to look her over, even though he knew that she wouldn't mind. In fact, it would probably please her a great deal. That by itself was reason enough not to do it. He had developed a professional relationship with Natasha that she had never seemed satisfied with.

"I'm sorry." Cap said "I guess that I was just thinking out loud."

"I understand." Natasha said with a knowing smile "When I was Avenger's chairperson I did quite a lot of that."

Cap's voice fell to a whisper "I don't want to worry anyone, but I have a bad feeling about today."

"I can't remember you ever saying anything like that." Natasha said, understandably looking worried.

"I hardly ever feel that way. Even when I do, I tend to keep it to myself. No challenge is insurmountable, but there are some times…" Cap rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. He felt very tired.

"When was the last time you felt this way." She asked.

Cap thought for a moment, looking at the worry etched on Janet's face.

"San Piedro." Cap finally whispered.

"What?"

"It is a long story." Cap admitted.

"I'd like to hear it if you want to tell it." The Widow said with a shrug "We're on government time, after all."

Cap smiled.

"Come on…" Natasha said, sounding like a mother talking to her little tyke. "Wanda tells me that you tell quite a story."

"It is quite a bit better after a few drinks." Cap informed her with a wry smile.

Cap scratched his chin thoughtfully. What harm could it do to tell her? In the end it might even help. But where to begin? There were so many things to tell, so many factors. Even Nick would tell him that everything wasn't what it appeared to be on the surface there. He would know better than anyone.

"I guess that it all began in Australia." Cap began.

* * *

1943

There were things happening in dark chambers that Steve Rogers would never be informed of. He would not learn of them until after the war, but they would ever affect his destiny. They would haunt him like a shadow through the years as the decisions of a few men would change the world forever. In January of 1942, As Captain America and Bucky flew to fight the Japanese in the Philippines, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to focus their efforts on the European Theater. In February, shortly before the President transferred General Macarthur to Australia and left his troops with orders to fight to the death, he signed Executive order 9066. With this stroke of the pen, 100,000 Japanese Americans were relocated to prison camps in the southwest. In July, as Steve digested the disaster in the Philippines and prepared for his revenge at Guadalcanal, The President established the OSS under Colonel Donovan. The intelligence war began with a whisper instead of a bang. In August Roosevelt decried barbarism perpetrated by the Japanese, insisting that they would be tried in an international court for their crimes. As Roosevelt said those words Steve Rogers was on Guadalcanal. He watched from a trench as US Marines used thousands of gallons of fuel to flood caves filled with Japanese troops. When those troops refused to surrender, the Marines set the fuel on fire and burned them alive.

That is how Captain America learned that the first casualty of war is the truth.

How could he know, even then, that there was a collection of scientists that called themselves the Manhattan Energy Engineering Project? Shortly before the Pearl Harbor anniversary the collection of men made a breakthrough in a field that he could barely understand. With that first chain reaction they most literally caught lightning in a bottle. They knew that the world would never be the same. If they had an inkling of the events that the chain reaction would set in motion, would they have continued? It didn't matter, because they were not permitted to tell a soul. As 1942 became 1943 a Senator named Harry Truman was told to mind his own business, and forget that he had ever heard the word "Manhattan." The die was cast, and Captain America didn't even know it because he was on a beach in Australia getting a tan. After a year in hell, Steve Rogers had been given two weeks of leave.

"Whoa… look at that one, Steve!" Bucky said, looking at another girl named Sheila. They all seemed to be named Sheila.

Steve smiled at Bucky, goggle eyed and looking horny as a goat. Like most people on the beach, the girl wasn't wearing much in the way of clothing. What she was wearing didn't leave much to imagination. As 15 had become 16 he had seen a change in the young man. He certainly wasn't the shy and retiring type like he had been at his age. He was a big, strong kid and he had seen him punch out men much bigger than himself. For all that, he was still just a kid. It had been tragic to see how much Bucky had lost his innocence through the course of a still young war. He had never forced the young man to adhere to his personal code to never use firearms. Bucky was a trained soldier, but not a super soldier. He had cut men in half with machine guns, sniped them with rifles, fired pistol rounds into their faces at point blank range. He had done what he had to do, and he had survived. Now it was his time to rediscover what so many took for granted: the young adulthood that the war had stolen from him.

"Do you think that I should talk to her? What should I say to her?" Buck asked anxiously.

"Just tell her that you're Bucky. She'll fall right into your arms when she swoons."

"That's not funny, Cap." Bucky said, laughing in a way that quite contradicted his words. The other day Steve had located a magazine from the States meant for young women, and its cover had Bucky's photograph in the middle of a big pink heart.

"Oh?" Steve said with a raised eyebrow.

"You get the cover of Life and I get the shaft." Bucky said, referring to the shaft of the arrow going through the pink heart… Steve hoped.

"Just let them come to you, Bucky." Steve offered "If they're interested, they will."

"Easy for you to say." Bucky said snidely "You look like you just jumped out of a weight lifting magazine. I'm just a pale little boy who's been fighting malaria and diarrhea for the last six months."

Steve couldn't deny it. He had not gotten sick once in the entire time he had been in the Pacific Theater. The Super Soldier Serum was a knockout punch for every disease in a disease ridden part of the world. Bucky had not been so blessed.

As if to make Bucky's point for him, a couple of strapping soldiers walked up to the girl and struck up a conversation with her. Whatever they said worked because she took one of each of their arms and walked off the beach with them. Bucky looked disgruntled, shaking his head.

"Don't worry, Buck. There's plenty of fish in the sea."

"Why do girls always go for guys like that? Why do I have all the rotten luck." Bucky whined.

"Well, I do remember one thing that General Marshall told me…" Steve said.

"What's that?" Bucky asked.

"Fortune favors the bold." Steve quoted the general. "In other words, you make your own luck sometimes."

Another girl named Sheila walked down the beach, looking positively saucy.

"Go get her, Buck." Steve insisted.

Bucky slunk real low in his sun chair "I would… but what would I say?"

Steve sighed.

* * *

As night fell Bucky had returned to the Enlisted billets, promising that he would stay out of trouble, and Steve had gone to the Officer billets. He had promptly been roped into a drinking expedition to some of Sydney's most infamous watering holes. The other Officers didn't know that he was Captain America, and they somewhat disliked him because he was such a straight arrow. He didn't smoke, which was much more unusual than is the case today. He barely drank, and even then he didn't seem to get drunk. He treated women with the velvet glove of a gentleman, frowning on lewd comments even when they were well out of earshot. In general, to their eyes, he was just no fun. These men were veterans of a hell on earth, and insisted on making this short time they had away from it as eventful as possible.

He remembered the woman all these years later by her bright red hair, and her height. It set her apart from the crowd, and when she came to the table he knew that there was something there. He didn't know what, but it was something. She was charming to talk to with her almost-British accent. She wasn't shy about touching him. She would put her hands over his as they talked at the table. She would lightly stroke his back as they danced. She had somehow managed to pull him away from his companions to give him what she called "The dime tour." As they walked the streets she said pointed out the sights with totally inappropriate, bawdy anecdotes. She was full of life to a soldier who had known nothing but death for a year. He offered to walk her home, and she had almost pulled him all the way there. Then she had pulled him through the door.

"I've never met a Yank like you." She whispered in his ear as they stood together in darkness "You're special. You're really something y'know?"

He wanted to say something back, but couldn't think of a thing. It didn't seem to matter. It was almost like she didn't expect it. As they sank into the darkness of cool sheets in a warm night he was more afraid than he had been in the jungles of the Philippines. Steven Grant Rogers was only 22 years old despite all of his world experience. He had not been with a woman since that night with Sara. She seemed to sense his hesitation yet did not seemed offended by it. She took over and eased him into it. It was a lovely end to a lovely night in the middle of a horrible war. He hadn't even asked her name. To this day, although he had no way of knowing, he suspected that she would have said that her name was Sheila.

* * *

"I don't believe it." The Widow interrupted.

"Excuse me?" Cap asked.

"I don't believe it. You had a one night stand?" She asked, her eyebrow arched and a look on her face that seemed to barely contain an infinite amusement.

Cap laughed "Is that so hard to believe?"

The widow started laughing. Cap continued to laugh. Some Avengers looked in their direction wondering what was so funny. A group that always seemed to be together, whom Cap had come to think of as "the youngsters" (including Firestar, Justice, Rage, Darkhawk, and Silverclaw), looked at them with open astonishment. From the look on their faces you would have thought that they had never seen Captain America and the Black Widow laugh before. Perhaps they hadn't, because being an Avenger was often a grim bit of business and the two of them were rare participants in social gatherings.

"I'm sorry." Cap said, getting himself under control.

"I know." The Widow said with a suggestive smile "It is just hard to imagine sometimes that there is a man underneath that suit."

"There is." Cap insisted. "Just like anybody else."

* * *

The next six months were the kind of stuff that Comic books were made of.

After Australia Captain America was assigned to Colonel Donovan, as he was supposed to be since Macarthur got a hair up in his crack about the Super Soldier. The Colonel had every right to be angry at Captain America's willful insubordination, but instead seemed genuinely glad to see him. Sitting at a desk in the War Department, he threw down a stack of files as thick as his fist and threw up his hands in exasperation. The files contained everything that the OSS knew about the Nazi's crew of "super agents" that were making the war almost impossible to fight. The Red Skull was the monster of them all, a murderous madman that made the agent he had faced on his first mission look like a Franciscan monk. Baron Heinrich Zemo and Arnam Zola were simply scientists who had a way of coming up with mad inventions. More troubling were Master Man, who seemed to have been the recipient of a far more successful version of the Super Soldier Serum, and Baron Blood. Colonel Donovan seemed very skeptical of the rumors that he was a vampire, but was at a loss to explain his incredible strength, much less his ability to turn into a bat.

Over the next six months he faced them all, and ruined their plans every time.

During this time he perfected his own fighting style, that was much changed from what he had been taught. He no longer had his instructors to keep him up to speed, so he had taken over his training himself. His fighting style had been forged in the heat of battle, and even today few would argue at its effectiveness. He even had developed a method of throwing his shield like a discus, and found it a very effective ranged weapon. It dropped people's jaws when they saw how far and how accurately he could throw it. He was only improving with each successful mission, getting the disc to return to his hand about half the time. It was shortly after a successful mission that he was called into another conference with Colonel Donovan. He and Bucky had just infiltrated and destroyed one of Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker's numerous Castles o' death. He had come up on new orders, and was curious about what they would be. Bucky had injured his leg and would be out of action for a month or two. Whatever they had in mind for him, he would be going this one alone.

"I've finally found a unit that will take you." the Colonel joked.

"What would that one be, sir?" Cap responded with due interest.

"You wouldn't believe these guys if I told you." The Colonel said with a shake of his head "Group of US Army Rangers. We hand picked them from the larger brigade sized elements and modeled them after the British Commandos. They cannot hold onto an officer. Three of them resigned their commission and the rest of them died. The Top Sergeant is a real piece of work. I think that I'll let you draw your own conclusion when you meet him. He's a New Yorker like you. The two of you should get along just fine."

"I find all of this troubling, sir." Cap admitted.

"Not half as troubled as you'll be when you get to North Africa." Donovan said "Now freshen up while you can, because you've got a plane to catch, Captain."

* * *

Captain Steve Rogers got off the plane in his overseas service uniform, as per his orders. He carried his costume an shield in an oversized courier's satchel, because the CO had insisted that he did not want any enemy interests to know that Captain America was in Africa until it was too late to do anything about it. He had been briefed a little more on the unit he was hooking up with on the flight. They sounded like a bunch of renegades. They had ran some of the most dangerous operations in Africa. Sneaking into German Camps to sabotage tanks, liberate POWs, and basically cause chaos. Half the time they did it on their own initiative, in the absence of orders. The War Department had learned the hard way to keep the orders coming because, if they didn't, idle hands would be the Devil's workshop. Colonel Donovan was right. These guys sounded exactly like his kind of guys, and their name was the kicker.

They called this bunch "The Howling Commandos."

It wasn't hard to find them. All that he had to do was follow the noise. The camp, like most Army camps, was a place of order and uniformity. All the tents and shelters were dress-right-dress and squared away. Little poles with multicolored guidon flags were posted in front of Companies and Battalions. Soldiers in olive drab shuffled from place to place performing a multiplicity of tasks in a quick, professional manner. Then there was the tent at the end of the camp. It couldn't really be called a tent. A lean-to would have been more apt. It was at a slight right angle with the rest of the camp, taking up two spaces and generally looking out of place. It had no guidon, but rather in its place a mop handle with a pair of boxer shorts hanging from it. There was no doubt that he had come to the right place.

"…So I tell her: "Baby, if you think that is long you should see the rest of it!" Was the punch line he heard as he approached the tent, followed by an uproar of laughter.

Steve walked in without fear of what he was interrupting, but was almost caught flat footed by what he saw. The lean-to was nothing but a couple of cots covered with crushed beer cans and a hastily constructed poker table. Around the table sat about a dozen soldiers smoking and joking, playing cards like it wasn't the middle of the work day in the middle of the war. One of them looked at him, made a little "pissh" noise, and hauled himself to his feet. "Commandos!" He howled the preparatory command, which was frankly an unusual one "ATTENTION!"

The big man who had called them to attention saluted. Steve couldn't tell what rank he was because his rank must still be on his sleeves, which were of course torn off at the shoulder. He was a rough looking character, even in a tent full of crack infantrymen. He looked like he hadn't shaved this week and looked right at the clean shaven officer before him with a look in his eyes that DARED the man to say something about it. His boots, like all of theirs, had long ago lost any pretense of being black, much less polished. This group was certainly far from being parade ground soldiers. They were an odd, out of uniform bunch far outside the boundaries of military regulations. One guy was wearing a Scottish style beret and another was wearing a beat up English bowler hat, for cripes sake. Another one was black, in the days when all Army units were still segregated. Steve supposed that this one wasn't. They all seemed to have something in their mouths. Chewing tobacco, cigarettes, toothpicks, a pipe, one of them was even chewing on what seemed to be a piece of grass. The hard case who saluted was chomping a big, stinky cigar.

"Top o' the day sir." The rough looking character said with thinly veiled contempt. "What can we do ya for?"

"Are you Sergeant Fury?" Steve asked, looking at the alphabetical roster her had been given.

"Ma Fury's boy in the flesh." Fury said, chomping his cigar a little more. "Who're you, sir?"

"I'm your new CO." Steve said "I am…" but he never got the chance to finish.

The assembled Howling Commandos were laughing their asses off.

"Ah thought they plum gave up on givin' us any more ossifurs!" A blond southern boy drawled ignorantly, spitting out his piece of grass.

"That's a good one!" Another soldier laughed. He was an Italian who sounded like he came from Philadelphia.

"Jolly good!" The guy in the Scottish beret cackled.

"At ease!" Sergeant Fury howled, seemingly living up to his name. "Sorry about that, sir. Let's just say that this outfit hasn't had much luck with officers."

"I understand, Sergeant." Steve said. "It is my understanding that you have already been briefed on your mission."

"If you'd call it that." Fury said, pointing with his thumb to a document skewered to the poker table with a bayonet. "We read the important stuff and throw the rest out the window."

"No plan survives enemy contact anyway." Steve agreed. "I know that I'm new to you guys, so I'm not going to come in telling you how to run your outfit. Just consider me here to watch, learn, and stay out of your way. It will be under the expectation that, when the time comes, you will do the same thing."

"You're not talking like a shave tail, sir." Fury said, indicating an officer that got his commission from West Point "You sound like a mustang. Where have you served?"

Steve was well within his rights not to tell them, because most of his missions were classified top secret. He saw no reason to lie to them, though. "I served in the Pacific."

"What campaign?" Fury further interrogated.

"All of them." Steve said honestly.

The room was silent.

"Bataan?" One of them asked, breaking the silence.

Steve just nodded, and Fury nodded back.

"You all know what you have to do. I'll meet up with you guys at 0600 in utilities and we can move out." Steve said.

"There are our utilities, sir." Sergeant Fury said, indicating their shabby uniforms.

"These aren't mine." Steve said, indicating his dress uniform.

It got a laugh out of the assembled Howlers. He saluted them, breaking with military protocol a bit, and exited the tent when they returned it. He wasn't even out of earshot when they started talking about him.

"Where'd they dig this guy up?"

"I don't care, just as long as we don't have to bury him."

"I give him a week."

"I give him two."

"You're on!"

"What a sucker bet! I think he bites it tomorrow."

Steve just smiled.

* * *

One of the best parts of his job was seeing the look of shock on people's faces.

The Howlers had called a formation in front of their lean-to, if you could call it a formation. It was more like a gaggle, or a bunch of standing around waiting for a stupid officer to show up. To the normal military officer, this could be an infuriating lack of discipline. To Captain America, it was as refreshing as a breath of fresh air. There was something that he could learn from this bunch, which was doubtless why the colonel had sent him here. When they saw him coming, every jaw dropped. Cigarettes, toothpicks, cigars, and even a pipe littered the dirt around where they were standing. It was fury who recovered first.

"Commandos… ATTENTION!" He called, then saluted.

Captain America, in full uniform, saluted back.

"You… didn't tell us that you were Captain America." Fury pointed out the obvious.

"It didn't seem important at the time." Cap shrugged "We have a mission. Like I said, I don't want to be a distraction. Lets just go do what we do."

They did just that, and in a few hours the Howlers were looking on in wonder as Captain America bounded from tank to tank kicking machine gunners out of their turrets. He jumped down one hatch and a Nazi flew out of it like a jack in the box with its spring cut. He threw his shield, banked it off a tank, and knocked down a squad of infantry like dominos. The whole time the Howler's opened up with their Thompson machine guns and bellowed their famous cry. It was a cry first inspired by "Rebel" Ralston's insistence that they duplicate the Rebel Yell used by his forefathers on Civil War battlefields.

"WHA-HOOOO!" The Howling commandos howled from their fighting positions, gunning down Nazis left and right.

This had not been the plan, but like Captain America said… plans are the first casualty of enemy contact. They had been sent on a reconnaissance mission, but when they saw one of General Rommel's last, desperate suicide squads heading for the American position through a perfect ambush point they could not in good conscience pass up the opportunity. Too many lives could be lost if they attacked the camp without warning. It had been Sergeant Fury that ordered the attack, but all eyes looked to Captain America because he was technically in charge. Even if he had disagreed, he did not think that he would overrule the Sergeant. These were his men, and he was well aware what they were capable of.

"Let's do it." Cap had said simply, backing Fury.

In the resulting chaos they had no idea that a lifelong friendship was being forged. On that battlefield in Africa Captain America and the Howling commandos fought together for the first time. It would not be the last.

* * *

All of the German troops were either dead or POWs. It was one of the greatest successes of the war. The suicide squads had not been prepared for a small unit action against them and had tripped over themselves. They had especially not been prepared for Captain America. After that mission the Howlers returned to their poker game and beer, inviting Cap to join them. He declined, knowing that the men needed some time off away from him after all the orders he had shouted at them through the course of the battle. He knew that it was hard for enlisted men to relax around officers, even those as seemingly carefree as the Howlers. It would be even harder so to relax around Captain America. He returned instead to the officers' tent and laid down behind a curtain, removing his mask. Some would say that he was being cavalier with his secret identity, but this was a time of war. He trusted the men around him to keep his secret, and besides that he looked like a hundred other blond guys.

The next day he did what he called "the rounds." He did his best to visit with each and every soldier in the camp. A Major that had been assigned to escort him told him which companies and brigades to visit. There was usually a small welcoming party waiting for him. The Army had discovered early on that a visit from Captain America caused a huge boost in that most important and indefinable resources: morale. He may have felt silly doing it sometimes, but he realized the importance of it to these troops. These were the troops that were soon going to be called on to invade Italy. Many of them would never again live to see the United States.

It was at the end of the rounds that he noticed something fishy. There were differently colored tents at the end of the camp opposite the Howlers. These were a dark brown instead of olive drab, and looked to he in horrible repair. They were threadbare things held together with multicolored patches. They looked like tents from the Mexican war that was fought before his father went to Europe. The Major seemed to be constantly deflecting his attention from them, and he was getting irritated with it. Finally, he simply started walking toward them, ignoring the protests of the Major behind him. He saw a wooden, hand painted sign that said 442nd - "Go for broke" on it. The Major squeaked a final protest before he threw the duster of the tent aside and walked in. When he saw who was in the tents he nearly fell down.

Japanese.

To understand what was going through Steve Roger's head at the moment you would have had to live in his world. You would have had to spent a year fighting Japanese troops after having had a brother killed by them. You would have had to listened to, if not believed, the unceasing political propaganda that stigmatized the Japanese as a race after Pearl Harbor. Now you would have had to be standing in that tent, looking at hundreds of Japanese soldiers in American Army uniforms, looking at you with as much surprise as you looked at them. Under Captain America's mask, Steve Rogers swallowed. The Major had been right. He shouldn't have come here.

The Japanese Sergeant that had called attention and saluted him held it even though Captain America had not saluted him back. He almost dropped it before Cap regained his senses and rendered the courtesy. It had been the look in the man's eye, that look that told him that he expected no courtesy, that sprang his hand into action. He could permit no soldier to feel that way. Not while he lived. The look of surprise in the Sergeant's features when he saw the salute was even more than when Captain America had first walked into the tent.

"How are you doing today, soldiers?" Cap said in loud and clear Japanese. Some of the soldiers responded with a rabble rousing shout. Others just looked puzzled.

"Sir… I don't speak Japanese sir." One of them admitted, looking almost ashamed.

Cap smiled.

"I'm sorry sir." The Private continued "I've lived all my life in San Diego."

"Its all right, son." Cap said, patting him on the shoulder, and then repeated the greeting in English. This time they all responded. He didn't know how to feel about assuming that they wouldn't speak English. He hoped that he hadn't offended them.

"Forgive our surprise, sir." A Staff Sergeant said to him; his nametape said _YUKASHI_ "We were not expecting you to visit."

"Why not?" Cap asked.

"You are… white." The Sergeant said nervously "White soldiers are not allowed on our side of the camp."

"Why is that?"

"There have been some incidents." He said as if it was obvious.

Cap's face almost flushed in anger.

"Sergeant, have white soldiers been attacking you?" Cap asked.

"Well… I wouldn't say attacked… you have to understand, sir. We only want to fight the Germans. We don't want to fight with each other."

"You are all soldiers in the uniform of the United States Army." Cap raged "Look at this shabby tent they have you in! They have to separate you from the other soldiers too?"

"I'm sorry that I upset you, sir." The Staff Sergeant said with a spontaneous bow.

"No, Sergeant. It isn't you that has upset me." Cap insisted, returning the bow "I understand that the brass may not have listened to you and the officers appointed over you. You better believe that they are going to hear from me."

Captain America shook every single hand of every single soldier in that regiment. He asked for their gripes, but heard amazingly few of them. All of them had families in concentration camps in the southwest. Some of them had even been recruited out of the camps. Now they were going to fight for the freedom of the nation that had taken theirs away. He left the tents impressed with every single soldier in that regiment, and determined to help them in any way he could.

* * *

"So did you confront the Generals about it?" Natasha asked.

"Yes." Cap said "I got them proper tents to live in, and a proper chow hall to eat in. The white soldiers burned them both down in a week. Made it look like an accident, but everyone knew what really happened. The 442nd didn't even complain. They just put up their shabby old tents again… kept on soldiering."

"Oh, God." Natasha said.

"The NCOs of the 442nd still came to me afterward and thanked me for all that I had done. They said… they said that they would never forget me." Cap's face was buried in one red glove, and he fought the tears back.

"What happened then?" The Black Widow asked.

"I was transferred again. I guess that they thought that I had caused enough trouble. They didn't understand. I had seen first hand the damage that hatred and division could do. I had tasted my own hatred and found it too bitter to stomach." Cap shook his head "I just wanted to help."

"You always do." Natasha comforted him.

"I didn't see them again until July, and by then it was too late." Steve said, his voice nearly a whisper.

* * *

Cap had a bad feeling about San Piedro Island.

The small island was not an essential tactical objective. It did not have any value in the overall war. If Sicily fell, it's supply line would be cut off and its occupants forced to surrender. Why did they send the 442nd there? How did they become pinned down? Why had it been a week since the brass tried to send any back-up, and why was he the one who got the call? He had a bad feeling about it, and that is why he called Lord Falsworth; the British super agent known as Union Jack. Months ago they had banded together with the Sub Mariner and the Human Torch to defeat Master Man and the Red Skull. The British papers had gotten win of it and named the group "The Invaders." Since then they had picked up a super-fast man known as The Whizzer and a former beauty queen appropriately named Miss America. They looked splendid for photo opportunities but Cap continued to work on his own whenever his most hazardous assignments came up. He did not want to endanger their lives unnecessarily. He knew, though, that he and Bucky could not take a dug in German division by themselves.

The plane flew low, and they all jumped. The only difference was that Namor, Miss America, and the Torch did not need a parachute. Bucky's Thompson machine gun chattered all the way down, working with the Torch's fireballs to scatter Germans that were trying to pick them off before they hit the ground. The Whizzer sped off almost instantly returning shortly with two handfuls of rifles that he had snatched from German troops. Namor grabbed and tank by the barrel an hurled it into the ocean. The Human Torch melted another one. Cap threw his shield and knocked a sniper out of a tree, the shield returning to his hand as Bucky laid down more covering fire. Cap was stunned to see a photographer with an eye-patch snapping pictures of all of them, and yelled for Bucky to get that crazy shutterbug to safety.

"They're over this way!" Miss America shouted down to him from where she was flying high above, pointing in the direction of the embattled regiment.

Captain America charged down a hill, breaking through the German lines with stunning speed. The last thing that the Germans had expected was an attack from behind. Then he ran full speed down the slope to where the regiment was pinned down. When he got there, he saw one of the saddest sights of his life. There were so many dead. So many wounded, and yet so many brave faces that were glad to see them. So relieved just by his presence, even though there was still an enemy to fight and so much to do simply to survive. They all said the same thing to him…

* * *

"'You didn't forget us.'" Cap said "They told me that, and I hadn't. I still haven't. Months later, as the Allies pushed through Italy, the 442nd was sent on a rescue mission to save a the cut-off remnants of a lost battalion. They lost more troops on the mission than they had been sent to rescue, and it was still viewed as a success. The 442 had a casualty rate of almost 300 percent. They earned almost 10,000 purple hearts and 21 metals of honor, even though so many of them were awarded long after they were dead. They finished the war as the most decorated unit in military history, but still returned home to the camps where their family awaited them behind barbed wire."

If the Black Widow was capable of tears, she would have cried at those words. She felt almost ashamed that she could not cry for them. It was something that had always been missing from her. She had ever lacked that compassion that so deeply lived in this man's heart. She supposed that he knew that, and that even though he did not hold it against her it was the reason why he would never share his bed or his heart with her. In the end, he could only be who he was… and she could do only the same.

The Black Widow's watch made a beeping sound, and she pushed the button.

"They are ready for you now." Colonel Nick Fury's scratchy voice came forth from the communicator.

"Thanks for the heads-up, Nicolas." Black Widow said sweetly before closing the communicator. "I guess that when you speak of the Devil…"

"… the Devil appears." Cap finished for her.

A White House Staff member came in ten minutes later to inform them of what Nick Fury had already let them know. The four founders were ready and waiting.

* * *

The Presidential Commission on Superhuman Activities was a many layered organization, but it consisted of one cabinet level position and four advisory positions. All five of these individuals were who they were facing today. There was no mystery, because they knew all of them well. On the far left was Valerie Cooper, who was most familiar to Cap but had also had contact with Iron Man. To her right was Raymond Sikorsky and Duane Freeman, both of whom had unsuccessful stints as the Avengers' liaison to the US Government. On the far right was Republican Senator Edward Thomas, who was Congress' representative to the commission. Sitting right smack dab in this ugly conglomeration was Henry Peter Gyrich, the President's secretary of Superhuman Activities. Cap, Iron-man, Yellowjacket, and the Wasp stared them down. No one in that room wanted to be the first one to speak.

"We all know why we are here." Gyrich finally began in his hateful voice. The red flat top and mirror shades had not changed, and neither had the man that wore them.

"Yes we do." Cap acknowledged.

"It is the finding of this commission that, as the Avengers stand right now, Federal Security Clearance cannot be granted." Gyrich said flatly Cap tried to contain his rage, and he could almost feel Tony's armor humming with his anger.

"Gyrich…" Cap growled.

"However…" Valerie Cooper interrupted, perhaps saving the meeting from degenerating into a shouting match "The suggestions of this commission regarding reparation of the situation is not unreasonable. I have the findings right here."

Cooper handed a small manila envelope to a page who shuttled it directly to Captain America. When the Super Soldier opened it, every cell of his body wanted to throw it back at the commission and storm out.

"Captain…" Sikorsky began nervously. They all knew that he was not an unkind man, but that he was also not one that had a history of fighting on their behalf. "I highly suggest that you consider this course of action. It is crucial to national security that the Avengers be ready to defend the nation, just as you pledged to do all those years ago."

Cap looked up at them with cold eyes.

"I would like to take this opportunity to tell you how much I respect you all, and all that you have done for the nation." Senator Thomas put his two cents in.

"With all due respect, Senator, you can shove your…" Yellowjacket began.

"Hank!" the Wasp cut him off.

"This is totally unacceptable." Cap said without hesitation.

"It is the only condition under with this commission is prepared to grant you your security clearance." Duane Freeman said, almost sadly.

"It is discrimination." Iron Man said.

"That cannot be denied, but it is lawful discrimination." Gyrich said "Check the books if you don't believe us. All that we are asking is that you hold yourself to the same standard as all other Federal Agencies."

"What if we walk away. Take it to the media and let them decide? You need us and you know it. You need the Avengers!" The Wasp challenged them.

"I don't think so." Gyrich surprised them by saying. "You want to refuse our suggestions, you are free to do so. They are only suggestions, after all. You will become vigilantes, and I can promise that you will receive zero cooperation from any federal or state law enforcement agency. In the event that you refuse, we have already lined up another team of heroes that are more than willing to accept our demands."

"Who?" Iron-man demanded.

"The Defenders." Valerie Cooper said.

The Avengers were shocked, but the Wasp seemed downright horrified.

"Doctor Strange, Silver Surfer, Namor, Valkerie, Hellcat, and Nighthawk." Gyrich said. "Well within our membership limits, and they can make a case for being Earth's Mightiest Heroes."

"It can't be true." The Wasp said.

"It is." Raymond Sikorsky said "If you fail to enact our suggestions than we will give your security clearance to them."

Cap felt like it was Pearl Harbor all over again.

* * *

"We can't possibly go along with this!" Hank Pym fumed as they left the chamber.

"It isn't up to us." Cap said.

"What do you mean?" Iron-man demanded.

"You should know. You were there when it was written. Cap said without any of the anger he was feeling. "Avengers Bylaws state any decision of this magnitude must be approved by a simple majority of the full membership."

"We have to bring this to a vote?" The Wasp said in horror.

"Only if those words you wrote mean anything to you." Cap said "We have to go through the process. We have to let them decide, because it effects them all."

The Avengers marched in silence toward the awaiting assembly, having no idea of the outrage the news they were bringing would arouse.

"No mutants!" The Scarlet Witch screamed when it was announced. It was the worst thing that they could imagine, and it had just happened.

"No mutant personnel. No personnel with criminal records. No personnel that are unlawful residents of the United States. No personnel with a history of mental illness. No personnel with any history of employment with foreign powers." Captain America read the "suggestions" of the commission again. "All provisions of the USA PATRIOT act enacted by congress."

"No!" Justice screamed "We can't go along with this! It isn't right!"

The assembly erupted into screams of outrage, arguments, lamentations, and poorly chosen words. It was about three seconds from coming to blows when one clear voice drowned out all the others.

"ORDER!" the scream came through the speaker the Wasp used to communicate with regular sized people when she was the size of a bug "LISTEN TO CAPTAIN AMERICA!"

The crowd boiled down.

"I can't tell you how I feel about this vote that we are about to take. I am the Chairman of the Avengers, and I must be impartial. I do not have a vote in this proceeding, because I must be the one to certify it. There are some of you that are opposed to this, and I understand why. Those opposed must form a delegation, as must those who are in favor of it. Both delegations will select a speaker to debate their position. Those that are undecided will remain in the middle of the room. The only thing that I can tell you is this. Both options are wrong. Neither one can be right. If this measure fails to pass, and we do not remove the Avengers that they demand removed, then the Avengers as we know it will cease to exist. We will either be a vigilante organization, or we will be forced to disband. If this measure fails, then that will be our next vote."

Over the next half hour the Avengers milled about, lobbied their positions, and formed three delegations. Captain America looked down on the process of democracy, feeling more helpless than ever to affect the proceedings. As the three delegations formed, he could see how deep a rift this was causing in the Avengers.

The opponents of the measure were predictable. They were led by the Scarlet Witch and the Vision, who stood by his wife. Quicksilver and the Beast joined swiftly as well. Firestar and Justice also. It was no surprise that every mutant member of the Avengers had joined them. It also made sense that those that would be refused membership for other reasons would flock to this side. These included Black Widow, Black Panther, Moondragon, Sersi, and Starfox. What was surprising was what strange bedfellows the vote had made. Both Hawkeye and USAgent, who despised each other, were also members of the delegation. This brought the opposed delegation to 13 votes.

Those that were supporters of it became less predictable. The leader of it had not been determined. They were simply those that judged the Avengers too important to the world to risk. Warbird and Black Knight were the first to stand there. Firebird and Machine man soon followed. Then a large group consisting of Quasar, She-Hulk, Stingray, Tigra, Captain Marvel, and Demolition Man. Dennis Dunphy had cleaned up quite a bit since his homeless days. Now he was an unlimited class wrestler again. He had been very terse with Cap all through the Assembly, and he had no idea how his partner felt, or what motivated him. Some of the stranger members of this congregation included Hercules and Crystal, who would be stricken from the rolls by their vote because they were not US citizens. Quicksilver glared at his ex wife from across the room, fuming with the betrayal. Darkhawk brought this delegation to 13 votes also.

Delegates from both sides of the isle pledged to vote as a block. There would be no changing their vote.

In the middle were the undecided votes. This was led by Wasp, Iron-man, and Yellowjacket. They had agreed with Cap that their votes carried too much weight as founding members, and that they would abstain until the end. Some of the other confused members included Ant-man, Human Torch, Moon Knight, Rage, Silverclaw, Spider-man, Living Lightning, Wonder-man, and Falcon. This, if you also included Cap as abstaining, brought that delegation to 13 also.

It was a bad sign.

* * *

The two chosen speakers who would debate were interesting choices. Those in favor of enacting the measure chose Quasar. Those that were opposed chose Justice. Both of these young men were, to Captain America's eye, two of the best the next generation of heroes had to offer. The fact that their peers had chosen them to speak for them reinforced that. They flipped a coin, and as it turned out Justice had the opportunity to go first.

"I look out at you, and you are all Avengers." Vance Astrovik began. "Nobody can deny you this. I have been an Avenger for so short a time, but even I know that we live by the creed 'Once an Avenger always an Avenger.' That is why we are all here, after all. We cannot afford to let the government make us into their own private strike force. They have used the Mutant Terrorism we fight against to stigmatize us. They have used it as an excuse to attack our personal liberties and our rights as human beings as parts of a greater war against terrorism. I have faced bigotry from society, my peers, and even my own father because I am a mutant. Still I have fought to achieve the justice that I named myself after. I know that you all fight for justice, and I know that you know that choosing the lesser of two evils is still an evil action. If the Avengers accept this injustice, what kind of message are we sending to the world? What injustice will we accept next? I implore you to vote against this measure. What they are offering us in no way justifies the cost to ourselves and to society."

He stepped down, and everybody looked effected by what the young mutant had said. Quasar looked very uncomfortable as he took the podium. His quantum bands responded to his thoughts. This included his anxieties. As he stepped up to the podium, they instinctively threw up a protective shield around him in response to his fears. He had been appointed protector of the universe; a responsibility that was still hard to fathom at times. Sometimes it had taken him far from his responsibilities as an Avenger. He did not feel worthy of being an Avenger, and he did not feel worthy of speaking for them. That didn't matter, though. He had been chosen, just as he had been chosen as protector of the universe. It was his duty, and all that he could do was his best to fulfill that duty.

"I look out over you, as Justice did, and I see what he saw. I agree with all that he has to say." This caused murmurs among the crowd, and he let them settle down before he continued "But I also think, as I look out over all of you, of the voices that cannot be heard tonight. I think of our fallen friends, and what we owe to them. Many have fallen as Avengers. Not as many as have served, and not as many as who have been given a second chance at life. Isn't that right, Simon?"

Wonder-man opened his mouth as if to respond as others turned to him. He exhaled loudly, not able to think of anything to say.

"I too have been given a second chance at life. I was dead and gone. I should not be standing here in front of you, but something brought me back. What brought me back was my duty to the universe, and my responsibility to all of you. Not all of us have been as lucky as Simon and I. Do any of you remember Eric?"

There were nods and murmured affirmations, a few angry glares and at least one person - Crystal - who began to weep silent tears.

"Eric Masterson. He was a mortal man. An ordinary man suddenly given the power of a God. Of all of us, only Hercules can possibly understand what that means. However, Eric had a better idea than we will ever had, because that power was taken back from him. He was Thor no more, but unfortunately that was not the end of his story. Because he believed that he could still make a difference, and Odin agreed with him. Odin gave him a weapon that made it all possible." Quasar closed his eyes and hung his head.

"Wendell…" Cap whispered from behind him, snapping him out of his misery.

"Do any of you who remember Eric remember what Odin inscribed on his mace?" Quasar continued "It was the most important thing that Eric believed. It is what he lived for, and it is what he died for. It said 'The world still needs heroes' and that is as true today as it was then. The responsibility of being an Avenger is not something that any of us want, but it is bigger than the issues we are discussing today. It is not something that you owe to Eric, and it is not something that you owe to me. You don't owe me anything. You owe it to the world, that will be unprotected the next time a crisis happens that no one could handle but us. That responsibility is greater than us. That responsibility is greater than anything."

Quasar stepped down, unable to look at the crowd to see their reaction. He was convinced, deep in his gut, that somehow he had failed.

* * *

After the brief recess, where the abstaining delegation were allowed to deliberate among themselves but were sequestered from the other two delegations, the measure was brought to a vote. As they had intended, the two committed delegations voted as a 13 vote block. The rest were allowed a brief statement as they cast their vote. All Avengers deserved the chance to explain their actions, because the Avengers bylaws had always been adamantly opposed to a secret vote. Avengers needed to be held accountable by one another. All Avengers needed to stand up and make the best decision that they could.

Ant-man: "Even though this vote will toss me out of the Avengers, I can't deny that the good the Avengers can still do outweighs that. I vote yes." Ant-man said.

Human Torch: "I have been fighting crime and injustice for longer than many of you have been alive, yet I still feel that I barely have the right to cast this vote. You have deemed me worthy, so I must stand behind the Avengers. I vote yes."

Moon Knight: "I have traveled around the world, and seen what blindly following any government can do. If we give corruption an inch it will take a mile. I vote no."

Rage: "There is no way that I'm going to give in to blind hatred and bigotry. My Grandma didn't raise me like that. I love the Avengers, but I love what they stand for more. I vote no."

Silverclaw: "I wish that I could explain why. My English isn't good. I think it is just wrong. I vote no."

Spider-man: "I dig what Quasar was saying about responsibility. My uncle used to say something a lot like that. This just isn't the way, though, and I'm not just saying that because the vote's doing to kick me out on my keister! You guys all know I'm a loner anyway. I vote no."

Living Lightning: "I don't know how I would have voted when I first joined. I was just a stupid kid then, but I am an educated man now. No organization is more important than the people that make up its members. I vote no."

Wonder-man: "I was one of the Avengers' first recruits, and I betrayed them. I died for it, but I don't think that I have in any way paid that debt. Wanda… Hank… I'm so sorry. I have to stand with the Avengers. I vote yes."

Falcon: "I know a little about injustice. I know a lot about racism. Some have even said that I'm mutant. That doesn't matter. What matters is if the Avengers continue this way they won't stand for a damn thing. I vote no."

The delegation against the measure was celebrating as soon as they heard Falcon's vote. That was 3 to 6, with only the founding members left. If they agreed to abstain, the measure would be defeated, and even if they all voted in its favor it would not have enough votes to pass.

Iron Man stepped up to the podium, and every eye looked to him.

"It is my duty to speak for the founders, for we have decided to vote as a block. Where the votes stand now in no way has prejudiced this decision, because we came to it beforehand. We have agreed that we cannot allow the organization that we built to fall apart like this. Something has to be salvaged, and that is why we all vote yes."

There was a terrific uproar, a thousand questions, and then a horrifying realization. The vote was deadlocked 19 to 19. In the event of a tie, there was one person who had to cast the deciding vote. The Chairman of the Avengers.

All eyes turned to Captain America, silent throughout the proceedings and his opinion unknown. His stomach sank as he looked out to all the Avengers. Once again they were looking to him. Looking to him to do the right thing. Looking to him to have all the answers. Looking to him to solve their problems and make the divisions that tore them apart just go away. He was not a magician. He was just a man in a flag suit. He had never felt like more or less, and once again all that he could do was make the best decision that he could. Make it and live with it… like a man. He opened his mouth to say the only words that he could.

"I had the opportunity to speak to Harry Truman shortly after the death of President Roosevelt." Cap said "He told me that he had a bale of hay fall on him once, but this time he felt like all the planets in the universe had fallen on him. He was not supposed to be President, but he figured that since he was stuck with the job he might as well make the best decisions that he could. He felt that he owed it to the people. He had no idea that he would have to be the one to drop the Atomic Bomb. He had no idea that he would have to be the one to desegregate the military. He had no idea that he would have to be the one to recognize Israel as a nation, oppose the Soviet expansion, and rebuild Europe. He had to make all the tough decisions, and he did it with a plaque on his desk that said 'The Buck Stops Here.' I have never understood the man, or that phrase, more than I do at this moment. The world still needs the Avengers to protect it. I cannot cast the vote that would destroy that. I vote yes."

Their faces would forever be etched in his mind. Scarlet Witch disbelieving. The Beast shocked silent. Hawkeye hanging his head and shaking it in disappointment. USAgent tried to charge the podium in a rage and ran into a yellow wall of force Quasar threw up. He beat his fists against it, face contorted in rage. Moon Knight's expression was ever hidden, but he simply turned his back. It spoke a thousand words. Then the moment of silence was over, and the uproar began. Captain America watched the Avengers tear themselves apart.

"How… how could you?!" Justice bellowed at him, tears in his eyes "I… I trusted you. I believed in you. I idolized you! You betrayed me! How could you betray us all?!"

There was nothing that Captain America could say he had just made the hardest decision of his life, and there were no words.

* * *

The press was stunned by the sight. No less than 25 Avengers storming out of the White House under escort from a cadre of SHIELD agents. Some were leaving because they wished it, others were leaving against their will. All of them were Avengers no more, and just as soon a it hit CNN the entire nation was glued to their television screens. As soon as news of what the Avengers had voted on got out, from the lips of Hank Pym, the media went wild with speculation on what this meant. Pym was the only founding member to be purged by the vote. He who had been there at the beginning, who had first suggested the team, had ironically voted himself out of the Avengers. Some of those who left chose to leave even though their membership was not prohibited. Falcon and Spider-man were examples of this. They left for moral reasons, and would be Avengers no longer.

Not a one of them, no matter how many times the media asked, would answer a single question about Captain America. From her office in New York city, Bernie Rosenthal looked on in horror. She couldn't believe what the government had done. The Scarlet Witch was in tears, even though the Vision was holding her in his arms. She could not imagine what kind of feelings were going through her mind at that moment, because the betrayal evident on her face was absolute. Sersi turned some reporters into pigs. Never give up on an old classic. When the police grabbed her she looked like she was going to do something but then shrugged, saying something like it was too obvious. Crystal and Quicksilver were still arguing, and the Son of Magneto screamed at the reporters to get out of his face. USAgent gave the CNN crew the finger and Spider-man webbed a camera lens. Falcon, Starfox, and the Living Lightning flew off. None of them wanted anything to do with Tony Stark, and insisted on finding their own way home.

Inside the White House Captain America watched them all. Behind him Tony and Wasp discussed how the new Avengers would be run with the remaining members. Cap had been unanimously voted in as chairman. Now all that was to determine was which of the remaining 14 would be active and which would be reserves. They had decided that each active member would have a reserve member who best approximated his power. Cap was actually quite surprised at how well this turned out. He did not offer any input into the process. He was too haunted by the decision he had made and the upcoming announcement he would have to make. He just watched the process, marveling at the resiliency of the Avengers. They didn't need anything more from him. All that they had needed was for him to assure them that they did the right thing. He knew at that moment that they would have marched into hell if he asked it.

_Should one man have so much power? _He asked himself.

Tony was the first to commit to active duty, with Machine Man as his alternate. The Wasp didn't know what she was going to do without Hank, but agreed to active duty with Tigra as her alternate. It was no surprise that Monica Rambeau, known as Captain Marvel, committed to active duty with Firebird as her alternate. Quasar committed next, with Darkhawk as his Alternate. Black Knight agreed to active duty with Stingray as his alternate. Wonder man decided to go active, with D-man happily agreeing to stay in reserve. Neither She-hulk not Warbird wanted an active membership, but they finally agreed on Jennifer staying active. Captain America, Iron-man, Wasp, Quasar, Wonder Man, She Hulk, and Captain Marvel was a team to be reckoned with, and all of them had able reserves. Now all that was left to do was have the press conference. They were preparing for it on the White House lawn even as the remnants of the former Avengers scattered to the four winds.

* * *

Cap stepped up to the podium. It was 8 o clock at night but he felt like he had been in the White House for a hundred years. If he was never invited back it would be too soon. He faced the media's flashing cameras and wondered if they were capturing that tired expression on his feet for posterity. If the headlines tomorrow would read _Captain America Defeated _or _Avengers Disassembled. _He put it out of his mind, because he was the only one who knew what he was about to say would change things forever. Not even the Avengers behind him knew, and that was good because they would not agree. They would not agree and they would not understand. They would not understand because they had not seen what he had seen. They had not been where he had been. As he stood in front of the podium, his mind wandered back to Northern Africa. Looking at the Tuskegee Airman of the 99th climbing into their planes to escort another bomber over Palermo. Hearing a full bird Colonel behind him tell him that he could not be seen talking to them because of what the southern soldiers would think.

This wasn't 1943.

"Ladies and gentlemen." Cap began in his most dignified voice "Thank you for coming and I appreciate the patience that you haveshown throughout the proceedings today. I would ask you to hold your questions until the end of this brief statement that I have to make. I hope that it will hold the answers to all your questions and make any questions that you have unnecessary."

The media piped down, enraptured by the picture in front of them. Captain America at the podium; Quasar, Iron-man, and the Wasp on his left with Wonder Man, She-hulk, Captain Marvel, and Black Knight on his right.

"I will begin by saying that you must be aware of what has happened to our membership roster. It is important that you understand the reasons behind this decision. This afternoon we were presented by an ultimatum by the Presidential Commission on Superhuman Activities. They couched them as 'suggestions,' but they were demands."

The Commission members watched in shock from inside the White House. This was not the prepared statement that they had reviewed! Captain America was going off the script. A few observant members of the media recognized a similar bewilderment on the faces of the Avengers behind Cap.

"Their demands were that we remove all members of our roster that they found objectionable. Those that had a criminal background, regardless of whether they had been pardoned for their crimes. Those that had worked for a foreign government, regardless of how long and in how many ways they had worked for ours. Those that were not US citizens, regardless of the fact that they could truly be classified as aliens instead of foreign nationals. Those that had a history of treatment for mental health disorders, regardless of their current mental state. Most importantly, and this is the most galling of all, all those members of our roster that could be classified as what some call Homo Superior… or Mutants… regardless of whether or not they have ever been associated with any organization that has been guilty of terrorism."

"You son of a bitch! You stupid son of a bitch!" Gyrich howled impotently at the television.

"We, the Avengers that stand before you had to chose between the lesser of two evils: become a vigilante organization operating outside the laws of the United States government, or cowtow to their exclusionary racist policies and gain their approval." Captain America said, trying to keep his composure in the wake of his growing rage "We chose the lesser of two evils, and knocked from our rolls 25 members who had more than proven themselves worthy of the name Avengers. Those who were truly Earth's Mightiest Heroes." Captain America said, his voice raising to an angry shout, the wood of the podium splintering in his iron hard grasp.

"Cap… don't…" Tony stage whispered to him.

"I cannot stand by and allow this injustice to stand. I cannot be a party to this arrogance. I cannot support the United States Government in its policy of exclusion. I cannot support an administration that would believe that it has the right or the mandate to decide who is a real American and who is not! We have made the decision that the nation and the world still needs the Avengers, but as the champion of the American Dream and the American people I cannot be a part of it. I am a soldier, but I am also a citizen. I now exercise the citizen's right to protest the unjust practices of my Government!"

"Oh god." The Wasp said, realizing what he was about to say.

"That is why I am here to announce my resignation from the Avengers… effective immediately!"

**Next: The Invaders**

**What is Captain America going to do without the Avengers? What are the Avengers going to do without Cap? As the Crimson Cowl's plans come to fruition, can the Living Legend of WW2 stop his nefarious plot? Tune in next week true believer! **


	14. Resolutions

_**Author's notes: Thank you to everyone who has reviewed my story so far. I find it hard to live up to all the kind things you have to say about the story so far. I hope that I can keep up the standard in these next couple chapters. A few shout outs:**_

_**PRO: You are a real trooper. I wouldn't still be writing on this if it weren't for you.**_

_**JenniferJ: You're right. I hope that you're pleasantly surprised with what is coming up for the Vision and the Scarlet Witch.**_

_**DariusFF and KaiBahumut: Thank you. I'll keep writing.**_

_**Hellion: Holy Cow. I don't know if I'm worthy of that review. **_

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Chapter 12: Resolutions**

The President's inauguration had a shadow over it.

Not only was the weather not ideal, but the 19th of January in Washington DC was plagued by questions. What direction was foreign policy going to take in the next four years? Would we ever convince our allies in Europe to trust us again? What about social security and Medicare? Education? The Environment? Free elections in Iraq? Withdrawal from Afghanistan? Rumors about Iran? All things considered, too many questions and not enough answers. The biggest question, the one that people were too afraid to ask over the air for fear of the response, had nothing to do with the political affairs of government. It had everything to do with the spirit of the nation. Ever since that November day in front of the White House, where wood was splintering under the grip of two red gloves, everyone had been asking the same question. The President's job approval rating had plunged into the low 20's, the editorial pages had been writhing with negativity, and the talk shows were having a field day. Over one, simple question.

Where is Captain America?

Henry Peter Gyrich stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial, taking a moment to appreciate the look of solemn weight on the statue's expression. He wondered if any potential vandal had ever gotten the notion to shoot the statue in the back of the head, just for the sake of irony. He knew that he wanted to pull forth his sidearm and put one in the head of the folk singer who was shilling change not 20 feet away from him.

"Where have you gone, Captain America, everyone has turned their gaze to you… whoo whoo whoo… God bless you please Captain America, we need you to show us the way… hey hey hey… hey hey hey…"

Not only was the man butchering Simon and Garfunkel, but he was poking at a raw, red nerve in the red haired man with mirror shades. He felt like he only had one ass cheek left, because the President had chewed the other one off. After the events of November 12th events of mutant activism had almost tripled. Protest groups that had previously been too scared to show their mutie faces were now handcuffing themselves to federal buildings and blocking traffic in cities all over America. This was to say nothing of the backlash from minority groups when they saw that only two minorities were still on the Avenger's roster and one of them was inactive. Didn't they all understand? From the top to the bottom they all wanted his head for doing no more or no less then enforcing the laws that their congress passed. The fact that the congress would pass a bill to shave all monkeys if it would make them look good obviously was lost on them.

Now Senator Thomas was resigning from the Commission, since his gutless party was trying to distance themselves from the decisions that Thomas championed. Some Democrat from the wilds of Oregon was chomping at the bit to take his place. Gyrich was not a partisan. He despised both of the parties equally, but he did love his country. Not many people knew Henry Peter Gyrich as anything more than a government enforcer with a penchant for doing the dirty work, but in his mind he was a true patriot. His father had named him after the great statesman Henry Clay, and had worked hard to send him to all the right schools so he would have a crack at that future. He looked to the Lincoln and Washington memorials and saw in them men to admire. Yet that folk singer was not singing accolades to any of the great men that Gyrich revered, but rather to Steven Grant Rogers. Skinny Steve and his super drugged body. Scrawny Steve and his freeze-dried anachronistic way of thinking. The Democrats complained that the President was trying to take the nation back to the 1950's, all the while rallying around a missing super clown who had slept through the '50's.

Henry Peter Gyrich found that totally ludicrous.

"You look like you are having one of those days." The voice behind him said.

Gyrich tried not to react, even though every muscle in his body wanted to turn around and throttle the man.

"No small talk." Gyrich said "Where the hell is he?"

"C'mon, Pete, what's with the hate?" the smug man said, walking up beside him to stare at the memorial just as raptly.

"You don't know anything about hate." Gyrich said.

"Not as much as you, surely." The new arrival said.

"I told you that I don't have time to waste with this verbal fencing, Norris."

"Its nothing that you have to worry about. He isn't even in the country."

"What?" Gyrich said.

"You can call off your dogs, take the stakeouts off the television stations, and release Dan Rather from that dark room. Steve Rogers isn't going to walk into a television studio and start badmouthing the president." Norris said.

"Norris… where… is… he…" Gyrich snarled.

"Helping the victims of the Tsunami disaster. Doing it on the down-low too. Good luck scouring the entire coast of southeast Asia looking for him."

"All those years of training in the FBI, CIA, and SHIELD and that is the best you can do?" Gyrich snapped at him.

"You think that you can do better? You can always go to Fury. I'm sure ol' one eye can probably tell you what Rogers had for lunch."

Gyrich balked at the idea.

"I'm just a consultant." Norris shrugged "I'm not Agent Norris anymore. Just Jack."

By the time Gyrich spun around, Jack Norris was gone. Evidently the man still retained a few tricks of the trade. He didn't have enough information to be helpful, but he had narrowed down opportunities and opened up options. Steve Rogers had been his nemesis for too long. The first time he had tried to get the Avengers to play ball and help mold them into a half-decent organization Captain America had fought him every inch of the way. He had even gone directly to the president to undermine his authority. When he and the Commission had gotten the leverage to make him work for them he refused, leaving them with an empty uniform to fill. Then he had gone above their heads again to get that uniform back forever. Then he had taken the Avengers to the United Nations to totally eliminate him from the equation. Now that he had gotten them to come crawling back, he would be damned if he would let the man make him into the bad guy again. Henry Peter Gyrich was the real patriot. Steve Rogers was the costumed clown living in fantasyland.

At least in Gyrich's own mind.

* * *

Tony Stark and Janet Van Dyne stood alone in the meeting room, doing paperwork in an awkward silence that neither one of them wanted to break. Somehow, the uncomfortable silence was more comfortable than when they were speaking. Because there was only one thing that they wanted to talk about and one thing that everyone agreed that they shouldn't. They were sharing the Avengers chairman duties, and had refused to have another members vote to make one of them official. The truth was that neither of them wanted to do it. If they didn't though, who would? Monica, maybe. Captain Marvel was certainly confident and capable, but like the Wasp she was wary of the responsibility. Her time as chairperson was marked by disaster, just as Janet's was. Black Knight laughed when they asked him if he wanted to take the responsibility. Quasar, Wonder man, and She Hulk were all dividing their Avenger responsibilities with busy personal lives and responsibilities. Jennifer was in court today, so a discontented Warbird was sitting in for her. Iron Man had a history with Carol Danvers that was often confrontational and tense. It was lucky that he had Janet to handle her.

"When are we going to talk about it?" Janet finally asked "It's been two months."

"Things are working out." Tony said "We are building a good team dynamic. Nobody is complaining…"

"They're just being good soldiers." The Wasp said "They're just trying to be… like he would want them to be."

There was no need to ask who she was talking about.

Tony got up and threw the paperwork on the desk. How did Cap ever fit all these duties into a day? There were five Avengers waiting to have a meeting and their chairpersons were choking to death on government red tape. In his frustration he almost punched the wall, and the only thing that stopped him was the fact that one of his punches would reduce the wall to rubble. Then he would have Jarvis to deal with and it would be curtains for Tony Stark. He looked back to Janet, dutifully working as if ignoring Tony's truncated tantrum could make everything better. She knew him well. There they were, like two mother hens trying to keep the chicks walking in a straight line. Because they were the founders. Because this was their mess.

A half hour later Tony put on his helmet, more to conceal the sour look on his face than his identity. They all knew who he was, anyway. What they didn't know was how disgruntled he was. He remembered those last couple of months with Cap. How those very few telltale signs of stress and depression caused so much worry and concern among the Avengers. Even in him. It was better that when they looked to their leader that they would see a featureless, iron face. When you are a leader, no matter how you really feel, you must project strength and confidence. Cap understood that, and that was why he would never ask for help. Why had they all pressed him so hard? It was too late for regrets. Far too late.

Tony and Jan were surprised by the carefree conversation in the meeting room.

"So why did you go back to Captain Marvel, Monica? Isn't there already a Captain Marvel?" Wonder man asked.

"Yeah. Genis the penis." Warbird said with a heavy hint of distaste.

"I don't know. I just felt like it. I don't think that he can sue me because he doesn't even live on this planet." Monica Rambeau said "Besides, I was sick of saying I was Photon and having everybody say _who?_"

"Why we're on the subject, why did you stop calling yourself Miss Marvel, Carol? You had a fan club and everything." Simon pressed Warbird.

"If you like the name so much, why didn't you call yourself Marvel Man?" Warbird said with even more irritability.

"That's an idea… I've got some bad press recently… I'll run it by my agent!" Simon said with a winning smile.

"Didn't you used to be called Marvel Boy, Q-ball?" Warbird sniped, aping Simon's enthusiasm.

"Er… no. That was somebody else with the Quantum Bands." Quasar said in a tone that inferred that he had been hoping that nobody would bring that up.

"Too bad Vance isn't still around. He was Marvel Boy." Black Knight said before he realized the words that were coming out of his mouth.

They all looked at each other awkwardly.

"We should get things underway." Jan said softly.

Tony did the honors of calling the meeting to order, and they covered every bit of business except what they really wanted to talk about. As the meeting mercifully came to an end and Tony was about to dismiss them, it was a surprising voice that actually spoke up.

"I'm not going to go on like this, guys. We have to talk about it." Warbird insisted "We have to talk about Steve."

"What is there to talk about, Carol?" Simon asked "We were all there. We all know what happened."

"None of us UNDERSTANDS though!" Carol almost shouted as she sprung out of her seat "I'm tired of this crap! I spent enough time denying my emotions and not talking about things while I was Binary! If we sit through another one of these meetings without talking this out I'll go crazy!"

The Avengers looked at her like she was already there.

"Tony! You and Cap were the only two who knew about the Super Skrull infiltrating our ranks, and we all know that if that wouldn't have happened things would have turned out differently! Did Cap tell you what he was planning to do? Were you two thick as thieves on that podium too! Do you set us up!" Warbird shrieked at him.

"Calm down, Carol." Captain Marvel demanded in her command voice, sounding every inch a Louisiana Policewoman. "That's the chair you're talking to."

"No, Monica. Its ok. She's got every right to know. You all do."

* * *

Tony Stark had spent the day before his meeting with Captain America is a sort of exuberant state of denial. He had fought off the takeover. He had needed to break the trust named after his mother to do it, but now Brand corp. and Stane International could kiss his Iron butt. He might even lobby to take them over after his software division rolled out that new operating system next year. He was exhausted, but he was triumphant. What was more, for the first time in a long time he felt invincible. He got the call that Steve was there to see him, which was a occasion so rare as to be almost inconceivable. He dropped everything to go see Cap.

Then Cap dropped him.

It had happened before he even knew what was happening. Cap had shook his hand, picked him up, and slammed him on the meeting table. A iron hard hand clamped on his windpipe and cut off the flow of oxygen to his brain.

"Don't move." The voice of the super solder warned him as he tore open Tony's shirt.

Tony didn't even try to struggle because he was too stunned. He couldn't even have moved if he tried. Captain America had taught Tony everything that he knew about hand to hand combat, but he obviously not everything that the super soldier knew. Whatever nerve he was punching in his neck didn't hurt a bit, but he could barely move. He felt that momentary pang of fear that he had been paralyzed again, but just as soon as the hand snapped away from his throat he felt feeling return. He had regarded his bare chest for a few moments, then released him. Steve stood before him now, offering his hand to him.

"I'm sorry about that, old friend. I had to be sure." Cap said.

"What… what was the meaning of that?" Tony coughed.

"I was checking to make sure that you were you." Steve said.

"What?"

"You have the scars of your open heart surgery." Steve said, tracing his finger down his own chest "The Super Skrull wouldn't have bothered with that detailed a imitation. He's not that smart."

"The Super Skrull?" Tony choked out again, feeling like Cap had gone off the deep end.

"I've been studying the Syndicate, cross referencing them with the Squadron Supreme because they are obviously trying to expand their membership to the extent of the Squadron. That is why the jailbreak at the vault was so important. But the Super Skrull escaped almost a year ago, and hasn't been seen since." Steve explained. "They have recruited him to be their version of the Squadron's Skrull, and he has infiltrated the Avengers."

"Why do you think that he has been imitating me?" Tony asked, trying to button his shirt back up even though some of the buttons were missing.

"He is imitating one of the members that was with us during the battle at the mall." Steve insisted.

"How do you know?"

"Because they knew we were there, they knew which ones of us were there, and they knew how to fight us. There was no element of surprise. Nobody achieves that level of tactical awareness without a source on the inside." Cap insisted "The Squadron are not psychics. They aren't even all that clever. The answer was so obvious that a blind man could see it, and it took a blind man to bring it to my attention."

As Cap explained about his meeting with Daredevil and what the vigilante had brought to his attention, the billionaire industrialist realized the severity of what Cap was telling him. He was also surprised that he had come to him first. He didn't know whether to be insulted or filled with pride. Did Cap suspect him, or had he other reasons for confronting him first? As they discussed the others, narrowing the possible suspects, a much more serious issue took shape.

"About those magazines in your reception area…" Cap began gravely.

* * *

"We eliminated the Vision and the Scarlet Witch because the Super Skrull would have had too much difficulty emulating their powers. We eliminated Wasp for the same reason. That left me and Thor. The more that we talked about it, the more obvious it became that it was Thor. Once Daredevil confirmed our suspicions we knew that we had to confront him. We didn't know about the universal weapon, and that was the reason why Cap decided to send him on the one way ticket to limbo. I was the one that came up with the idea of going to Reed Richards - because he is the authority on Skrulls - and it was Reed who hooked us up with ROM's weapon." Tony explained.

"Was that really ROM's hand cannon?" Captain Marvel asked.

"I think so, but for all I know Reed could have reversed engineered it himself. I wouldn't put it past him. He was in a hurry to get off the planet when we interrupted him, anyway. Something about Galactus. He didn't have much time to explain. Neither did we, because we had a date with the United Nations." Tony explained.

"What does this have to do with my question? Did you know that he was going to quit the Avengers?" Warbird challenged him.

"I didn't know for sure. Just like he didn't know for sure that I wasn't the Super Skrull. But… its not as simple as that. I've known that man for a long time, and even though he gave no indication of it I thought that he might do it. I wasn't certain, though. If I had been I would have tried to talk him out of it."

"I don't think that you could have, Tony." The Wasp interjected "Steve's mind was made up. Maybe it wasn't until he took that stage, but there was no doubt in his voice. Once he set his will to something, no force on heaven or earth could change his mind."

"That was what made him what he is." Wonder Man said.

"You were the last one to talk to him, Wendell." Warbird said, turning her eye to Quasar "Cap moved pretty fast, but you were faster. What did he say?"

Quasar bit his bottom lip. He had not wanted to talk about this at all, for a lot of reasons. It had been between him and Cap, but now all of them were looking at him for answers. For a moment, he knew exactly how Cap had felt the entire time he was here. He wanted to disappear at that moment, but he banished the thought from his head because his Quantum Bands were capable of making it happen (albeit with severe atmospheric consequences). At his heart, though, Wendell Elvis Vaughn was an honest man who had no love of secrets. What was the harm in telling them? It wouldn't hurt anything but his pride.

"He said his piece and then he stormed away. he was surrounded by reporters. I caught up to him and shoved away all the reporters with a sphere of quantum energy…"

* * *

Darkness had fallen, so the light cast by Quasar's quantum construct was the only light illuminating their conversation. The yellow luminescence cast on them both from all directions showed them in very sharp contrast. As they rose into the sky, it looked to all the frenzied observers like a miniature sun was rising from the White House lawn. They still could not hear each other over the racket from the crowd below, so with a moment of concentration Quasar caused the sphere to deflect sound waves. The silence washed over them almost instantly, but almost a minute later they were still just looking at one another, waiting for the other to say something.

"Cap…" Quasar ventured.

"I think that I've already said everything that I have to say." Captain America said.

"You can't do this! You can't leave the Avengers!"

"I already have." Cap said in a tired voice.

"We need you, Cap! We need you more than we ever have! Can't you understand that! You must have, because you voted…"

"I. Had. No. Other. Choice." Cap said, the force of his anger stopping Wendell in his tracks.

"What do you mean?" Wendell said. "You could have voted for us to fight the commission, we would have followed you every step of the way! All of us! I would have, Dane, Crystal, all of us no matter how we voted!"

"You tell me, Wendell." Cap said calmly.

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't have my mind made up until you gave your speech. You're the one who convinced me." Cap said, sadness in his eyes.

Wendell was stunned, the weight of what the super soldier had just said settling down on his shoulders.

"You… you mean… you weren't… oh god…" Quasar stammered, almost losing his concentration and causing them to plunge to their doom as the light globe dissolved. He regained control just in time.

Cap clutched his shoulder "Don't feel guilty. Don't feel responsible, because you were right. You have to see that. This was the only way."

"How… what did I say?" Quasar asked, eyes wide.

"The world still needs heroes. The world still needs the Avengers, and it doesn't matter who fills the roster as long as they hold to the spirit of the Avengers. We owe it to those that we have lost, those that are left, and those that have been forced to leave. How many times has the roster changed over the years? Even when it was just me, Hawkeye, and the twins we endured because we believed. This… what they have done to us here can't last forever. That is why I have done what I've done. That is why I've taken the stand that I have."

"We need you, Cap." Wendell reiterated.

"Wendell… you were a Lieutenant in the Army. You were a SHIELD agent. What would you have done then if your Captain was shot down in the middle of a battle?"

The answer came to Quasar almost without any thought, like a reflex.

"Take charge." Wendell said.

Cap patted him on the shoulder, showing that he had given the right answer.

"But…" Quasar began.

"I think that I have seen every young hero that is out there, and there isn't a single one of them like you. If you can just tap into a little bit of that part of you that convinced me to make the decision that I did, then you could be the greatest leader that the Avengers ever had."

"I'm not ready." Quasar said. "I'm not…"

"Worthy?" Cap finished for him "You've been in enough battles, in enough wars, to realize that doesn't have anything to do with it. When in charge, take charge. There are lives depending on you, on the decisions that you make, and that is all that matters."

"Cap, nobody could ever replace you…" Quasar almost whispered.

"I have faith in you, Wendell." Cap said "All that you need it to have faith in yourself."

* * *

"He asked me to take him to Arlington National Cemetery. He didn't tell me why. When I let him down he said that he had some friends to visit, and that it was far overdue. That was the last time I saw him." Quasar finished.

They all looked to him, struck silent by what he had just told him.

Quasar did not see himself as the others saw him. They saw a quiet young man with power so immense that they barely understood it shouldering a responsibility that they could barely comprehend. He could be indecisive at times, overly passive at others, but once he committed to a course of action he executed it with extraordinary moral courage. He had given his life for them once, and that was something that many of them would never forget. They respected him ever bit as much as Cap did, and wondered why he had taken this long to tell them. He saw himself as a guy who was at the wrong place at the wrong time and was just trying to do his best. He dwelled on his flaws more than his strengths, his failures more than his successes. Maybe it took someone like that, someone who was terrified of failure, to do a job as important as protecting the universe.

"Why didn't you tell us this before?" Black Knight asked.

"Cap wanted you to lead the Avengers?" Warbird said with a hint of both respect and disbelief.

"Why is that so hard to believe?" Wonder Man shrugged "The kid is hot stuff. We've all seen him in action."

"I think that it is an excellent idea." Captain Marvel… well… marveled.

"But…" Quasar tried to get a word in edgewise.

"What about you, Tony?" Wasp asked.

"I think that it deserves to be brought to a vote." Tony said.

"I think…" Wendell tried again, but was cut off.

"I move that Quasar be considered for chairmanship of the Avengers. Does anyone second?" Iron man sounded off.

"Tony…" Quasar tried to force his voice through a windpipe that seemed to be shrinking by the second.

"I second the motion." The Wasp said sweetly.

"All in favor, say aye!" Tony yelled.

Tony, Janet, Simon, Monica, and Dane all yelled "Aye!"

"Opposed?" Tony asked as an afterthought.

"Nay." Warbird said in a lonely tone of voice, elbowing Wendell playfully.

"The ayes have it." Tony said "Your gavel, mister chairman."

Wendell didn't know if he was in a dream or a nightmare.

"When do you want to make the announcement to the press?" The Wasp asked as Quasar numbly took the gavel.

"Can't we… just let them figure it out on their own?" Quasar finally answered.

The Avengers all looked at each other.

"I don't see why not! You're the boss." Simon shrugged.

"Err… if that concludes our business I move to adjourn." Wendell said.

They all looked at him.

"You don't have to move to adjourn. You're the chairman." Wasp said.

"Uh… meeting adjourned." Quasar said, striking the gavel just a little too hard.

"You did great, kid." Tony said, putting his arm around his shoulders and escorting him out of the room "Now there's a little matter of some paperwork…"

* * *

"Where is he! Where the hell is he!" Fury snarled, causing SHIELD agents to cower in all directions.

"We don't know, sir." A female agent was brave enough to admit.

"What do you mean you don't know!" Fury barked right in her face "We can track a bear wandering through the Canadian Rockies but we can't find one stinkin' super soldier! How many super soldiers are there on this planet, Agent Holmes!"

"Well, sir, if you take into account Jack Monroe, Rachel Leighton…"

"We don't know where the hell she is either, so are you trying to tell me that one out of three ain't bad!" Fury barked again.

"By no means, sir." Agent Holmes sputtered "I was just answering your question."

Fury stormed right by him to the SHIELD Helecarrier's PA system.

"NOW HEAR THIS!" Fury roared into the PA speaker "THIS IS COLONEL FURY! THE NEXT SON OF A BITCH THAT GIVES ME ANY LIP IS GOING OUT THE PORTSIDE WINDOW WITHOUT A PARACHUTE!"

Fury, threw the speaker and stormed back up to Agent Holmes, all burning cigar and bloodshot eye.

"You got that?" Fury snarled.

"Yes sir!" Holmes barked.

"You bunch of goldbrickers listen up, and you listen good!" Fury yelled "I want you to find Captain America. No lip. No excuses. You find him or I swear to God I will have every last one of you skinned alive and keel hauled! No excuses! Find him! Do you knuckleheads understand the words that are coming out of my mouth!"

_"Yes sir!" _They all shouted in unison.

"Get to it! Hop on it! While you're at it get me some Tylenol!" Fury barked as he stormed off the bridge of the Helecarrier.

Fury stormed into the COMMO room and tried to collect himself. Ever since the day that Hank Pym's long arm had fished Captain America out of the ocean Fury had done his best to keep his one good eye on him. He had never lost track of Cap for this long a period of time. Almost two months. The fact that he had lost track of him in Washington DC, which was crawling with SHIELD Agents at the time, was even more galling. Now the screws were starting to turn, the politicians had no answers, and he had to blow smoke up everybody's ass. His only solid lead, Bernie Rosenthal, had been staked out and wire tapped since day one without a single hint to his whereabouts. He might have to go to her directly. Maybe she knew but wouldn't tell some impersonal SHIELD agent. She might tell a friend, though.

Wilson.

"You get me Sam Wilson." Fury said quietly to the Communications Officer "I want to talk to him pronto."

* * *

Falcon was not a mutant.

What had happened back in Washington DC still haunted him. A part of him still didn't believe that it had happened. He had not been required to leave the Avengers. He had done it on his own. His criminal background as "Snap" Wilson was not well known, nor the fact that "Snap" was in fact a split personality. He had been proven not to be a mutant, and had somehow done an end around all the other requirements. Tony and the Wasp asked him to stay. He had told them where they could stick their membership. Even if they didn't discover those things in his background, he could not stomach the thought of staying on the team after what happened. Not for Steve, and not for anyone. Even if they never dug up Snap, Sam would know. Sam could never forget.

Even all these years later, Sam wondered how the mistake could be made. Professor X had told him that it was so, and he had believed him. After all, it didn't make much sense that he could hear bird thoughts in his sleep and talk to this falcon that was always following him around. That seemed like some psychic network mumbo jumbo and fit in pretty well with Xavier's kooky bunch. He even had a sentinel robot chasing him around, even though it was admittedly broken and probably would have chased a squirrel if the correct circuits were crossed. Then he had gotten curious about it. He had started asking questions. Most mutants he talked to had at least hints of their abilities pop up a little before their first short and curlies. Some even younger than that. He had not heard a single bird thought before the Red Skull snatched him up and changed him with the cosmic cube. By then he had left his teenage years behind him on the mean streets of Harlem. So he went to Hank McCoy.

It was during the worst days of the legacy virus, and Sam was afraid. Mutants were bursting into flames, melting into mush, dying horrible deaths. There was no rhyme or reason to when it would happen, no preventative measures that could be taken, and no cure. He had gone to Hank, clutching the one straw that remained. Maybe they had made a mistake. When Hank tested his blood for the X-factor common to all mutants it came back negative. Sam had almost jumped for joy when he got those results. His mind was singing: _I'm not a mutant! I'm not a mutant! I'm not! I'm not! I'm not gonna die! I'm gonna live!_

Then he saw the look on the Beast's furry face.

He had been caught in the middle of a Tiger Woods arm pull when he saw the tired frown and the look of almost resentful understanding at what he was feeling. He had just celebrated not being a mutant right in front of one, and at that moment he felt a remorse more solid than anytime in his life. Before he could say anything, before he could apologize, Hank McCoy turned away and left the room. They had been friends for years. Friends, allies, and fellow Avengers. They had barely spoken since, and never about what happened inside that room. As Samuel Wilson stood at the gates of the palatial estate he thought about that moment. He had buzzed at the front gate and been let in, but now nobody was coming to answer the door. Maybe he was not welcome here. It wouldn't be the first time.

Then the Vision walked through the closed door, startling him out of his thoughts.

"Whoa!" Sam said, taking a step back.

"I apologize, Falcon." The Vision said "I did not mean to startle you. I sometimes fail to take into account the disconcerting nature of my powers."

"No need to be sorry, Vision. Just say hello next time. Or open the door." Sam laughed his fist on his chest.

"What brings you to the mansion?" Vision asked.

"The mansion. When I hear you say that… I think that you must be talking about someplace else. I guess this place qualifies, though." Sam said sadly.

The sign next to the door read _Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters._

"The Beast was most gracious in inviting us here, giving us a home and a sanctuary. It was hard for Justice and Firestar to accept, but Pietro has said that it is almost a home away from home. Wanda, I'm afraid, is still having difficulty accepting what happened. They all asked that I speak to you on their behalf." The Vision's monotonous business voice made everything sound like it was a non-issue, but Sam hung on every word.

"So they won't see me." Sam said in disappointment.

"They are not ready." The Vision said "They appreciate that you stood with them when it counted, but they are still too disappointed at the turn of events."

"You think that I'm not?" Falcon said "I'm not here to have a tea party. I'm here to talk about Steve."

Vision just looked at him for a moment.

"That would not be wise." The artificial man finally said.

"It's been two months!" Sam said "If we all work together we can find him, and if we all work together we can fix this mess."

"That is the problem." Vision said "Not everyone feels as you do."

"What are you saying?"

"It is a difficult time, but we are starting over here. Vance and Angel are working on their degrees and hope to be teaching here soon. Pietro is already teaching. Even I have gained a measure of acceptance here. This is our home now. Perhaps it is best that we have moved on to another chapter of our lives." Vision explained in his ever-patient monotone.

"I notice that you didn't say anything about Wanda." Sam observed.

"As I said… times of adjustment are always hard. Sometimes, however, they are necessary."

"So you're saying that we should just all lie down for this?" Sam said, beginning to lose his composure.

"For now." The Vision said "After all, what choice do we have?"

"We can find Steve. We can straighten all this out."

"The Captain has his own cross to bear, so to speak." The Vision said, sounding a little colder than his normal monotone.

"Cap isn't a traitor, no matter what you think. He just made the best decision that he could. It took a while for me to understand that, but I…"

"That is a matter of opinion, and not one that everybody shares." Vision concluded, turning his back on Sam and preparing to walk back through the door.

"Wait!" Sam said.

"I'm sure that you can find your way out, Falcon." Vision said as Sam's grasping hand passed right through him.

"God damn it!" Sam snarled.

He couldn't believe how Steve had managed to alienate everybody. Rather than pick a side he had pissed off everyone equally. His reception at Avengers mansion had not been all that different than it turned out here. The only difference that was instead of Vision as the hatchet man it was Jarvis. No matter what anybody said, they were all worried about him, but not one of them would admit it. Falcon stood looking at the door with his fists clenched. Maybe he had made a mistake coming here. He was only human, after all, and to err was human. He heard the alarm beeping from his watch that would normally signal that it was 8:00, but it was not that hour. It could only mean one thing, and that was that Vision was right. Nick obviously didn't share the Android's opinion on the matter.

* * *

There was one quality that made the Sinister Syndicate one of the hardest criminal organizations to track down, and that was the fact that once they took off their garish costumes they looked just like anyone else. As they sat on a collection of sofas in the VIP lounge, not one of them looked like anything other than a collection of friends and co-workers having a good time on a Friday night. They were fashionably dressed, but not ostentatiously so. They were living it up, but to the outside eye not far beyond normal means. In their civilian guises, they were the polar opposite of their flamboyant alter egos. This, however, was not what it seemed. Hyperion was having a great time, but he knew that this wasn't the goal. This was not a party or a night out, but rather a recruiting mission. The only way for it to be successful was for it to seem like everything but that.

The dance club smelled of sweat, smoke, and lust. Hyperion took it all in as he sat on a cushy sofa in the VIP area. His hyper senses were baffled and disconcerted by the chaos of noise, flashing light, and bodies writhing against one another. It was hard for him to snap his attention away from it, but he finally managed with some difficulty. The blonde sitting next to him on the sofa was beautiful and sweet, yet had a hard edge to her. He liked her a lot, and found that he approved of the Cowl's choice. Jennifer Kale was a party girl who had spent too much time away from the party. She was having the time of her life and they were making it happen. The Crimson Cowl version of wining and dining, only the alcohol was much stronger. She had not yet agreed to join them, but had not refused either. All that it would take was a little nudge, Hyperion knew. He was not really a man at all, but he had a deep appreciation of human desires and appetites.

"Moonglow, huh?" Jennifer said as she mulled it over "That would be really cool. I've never had a secret identity before."

"Anonymity has its advantages, and in our line of work it is essential to our success." Hyperion told her "For all my power, who would ever take Mark Milton seriously?"

"I see your point." She said with a dizzy smile.

"Tell me, Jennifer…" Hyperion said in his most charming tone of voice "How are you enjoying your stay in New York?"

"Oh, I've lived here before." Kale said in her implacable accent. It seemed a mix of backwoods south and western twang "Not far from here, on Bleeker street. I've been all over, though. Everywhere from Florida to Frisco. I'm having a great time. For the first time in my life I'm really feeling free."

"I understand totally." Hyperion said "Sometimes life can be complicated by too many responsibilities and obligations."

"Tell me about it!" Jennifer said as she tapped a Marlboro light out of her pack "It seemed like I wasted years of my life running around that Swamp in Citrusville."

Speed Demon wasted no time offering her a light, almost like a gentleman.

"You have many gifts." Power Princess said from her left side "Gifts that we appreciate, and are prepared to reward."

"I don't have a job now. Not much money." Jennifer seemed to be musing to herself as she took her first deep drag. She had already explained that she only smoked when she drank, and she was getting fairly drunk.

"That is not going to be a problem for long." Dr. Spectrum said with a smile. He was dressed like the pimp that he was.

Power Princess flashed him a sharp look.

"Tell me, Jennifer. What have you liked the most about tonight?" Hyperion deflected Jennifer's attention from the rivals. He looked deeply into her eyes as he asked her, cradling her chin in his hand. Her hand stroked his as he did it. She had taken to him more than the others, and he would like to think that it was because she was attracted to him. He had to use whatever he could.

"I like the people." Jennifer said with a drunk smile.

"I'm a people person too." Hyperion said "I see that you've been checking out many of the people out in the club. What would you say, Jennifer, if I told you that you could have any one of them you wanted?"

"What about you?" She asked Power Princess. "You're beautiful."

"Anything and anyone that you want. Tell me… do you prefer men or women?" Hyperion asked with no hint of any judgment.

Jennifer blushed "I like both."

"Both it is, then." Hyperion said, snapping his fingers. Dr. Spectrum and Power Princess stood up as if awaiting the command.

"Zarda, Joe, take Jennifer to the upstairs lounge and give her as much as she wants for as long as she wants." Hyperion said.

"What about you, Mark?" Jennifer asked with a little pout as Power Princess helped her up from the sofa.

"Don't worry about me, sweetie. I'll be up soon to tuck you in." Hyperion said as she was escorted off.

He watched them go and regretted that he had lied to her. She was very sweet and beautifully proportioned. For all her powers of sorcery Jennifer was still a normal human woman, and her body could not possibly survive a physical encounter with him. The price of power was sometimes steep. Hyperion waited until the trio was upstairs before he addressed the remaining Syndicate members.

"We have business to discuss." Hyperion said to Golden Archer and Black Eagle. "I know that the two of you don't like to work together, but you are going to have to on this one. Somebody has to die, and special equipment is going to be needed to do it."

"I can deal with it." Black Eagle said.

He turned to Amphibian and Speed Demon "How is that turf war going?"

"A couple of those big shots are sleeping with the fishes right now, isn't that right 'phib?" Speed Demon said.

Amphibian nodded.

"They aren't going to be much of a bother. The ones that are left should be suing for peace by the end of the week."

Hyperion was pleased by the news.

"Everything is going our way right now, gentlemen. The Avengers don't know their asses from a hole in the ground. That's the way I want to keep it. It is too bad that they didn't just pick a fight with the government and forget all about us, but we need to be thankful for what we got. It seems like our inside guy got zapped, but that doesn't matter because he had outlived his usefulness anyway. We don't have to worry about him talking because he doesn't know anything. Our meeting places are different every time. Our organization is spread out throughout several fronts. I know that the boss has his plans, but it looks like they've been put on the back burner for now. As long as Captain America stays gone, there is no problem, but the second he comes back I want to deal with him. In the meantime, we have bigger fish to fry."

Hyperion noticed Amphibian's frown and relished it. The others dispersed and went about the duties that he had instructed. He went down to the bar and ordered a man's drink instead of what he had been sipping throughout the party. Hyperion sat there for a while longer finishing a drink that did not have a chance in hell of inebriating him. He stared up through the floor, and it became as transparent as glass to him. If he could not have Jennifer Kale and Zarda continued to refuse him, at the very least he could see them in action together. As others in the club walked by, they were puzzled at what exactly he was smiling at. A few asked what he was on, and if they could have any, but he simply waved them away.

* * *

Bernie Rosenthal exited the courtroom with a sense of satisfaction but not joy that she had won her case. She had, after all, been representing an insurance company in a class action suit. The personal injury attorney who had been representing the plaintiffs had pulled out every trick in the book, but had seemed tired and distracted. Bernie had not gone for the kill until the closing statements. She had brought up things that had been overlooked by the opposing attorney and made her look like an ass. She had been glaring at Bernie the whole time, but the jury ate it up with a spoon and found for her client after 30 minutes of deliberation. It was the legal equivalent of a slam dunk, and it would not be the case she was proudest of at the end of her days. Because of her skill her clients could continue to manufacture inferior, dangerous products with little fear of financial loss. It wasn't exactly what Bernie had set out to do at the start, but as the years had gone by she had gotten more cynical with the entire process.

"Good job." The sharp voice said from behind her, freezing her in her tracks.

"Thank you, Ms. Walters." Bernie said as she turned around to face She Hulk.

"Don't you know me well enough to call me Jennifer, Bernie?" She Hulk said.

"Maybe. I prefer to be formal in professional relationships, though." Bernie explained, trying not to be intimidated by the towering green woman that could smash her into something the size of a tennis ball if she got the notion.

"Just because you just whipped my ass doesn't mean that we can't be friends." She Hulk laughed at the little woman.

"I wouldn't say that I did that, exactly, but there are other considerations." Bernie said calmly.

"Maybe we could get together after work some time. Talk about things. You seem… I don't know… like you could use a friend." Jennifer said.

"Thank you, but I'm really doing ok." Bernie insisted "Better than ok."

"If that's the way you want it. I'll keep the invitation open." Jennifer insisted, waving a friendly goodbye as she hustled for a cab. Bernie wondered if being She Hulk made it harder to get a cab. Being a 7 foot tall green Amazon had to insure that the cabbie wouldn't just drive by without noticing, that was for sure.

Bernie wondered what was wrong with her. Jennifer had just been trying to be friendly, but Bernie didn't feel like she could trust her. How do you tell someone like that; so powerful, beautiful, and strong, that you don't like them and have never liked them? She didn't want to find herself in that position. Jennifer Walters might not be as savage as her cousin the monster, but she had gone wild on occasion to disastrous results. Bernie was afraid of her for that reason alone, to say nothing of her other insecurities. She had often worried that Steve was interested in her while they were working together as Avengers.

It always seemed to come back to Steve again, didn't it?

Bernie realized that she had not moved an inch since Jennifer called her, and she slowly took a breath before beginning to walk again. The way she felt around She Hulk was the way that she had felt about all of them. All the ones that Steve surrounded himself with. Black Widow, Wasp, Scarlet Witch, Tigra… why did they all have to be so beautiful? Why couldn't one of them be ugly, or at least plain? It would have been such a load off her mind. Even so, even with the relationships that he had with Sharon the super agent and Rachel the super villain, she was the only one that he had ever proposed to. She was the only one he had ever seriously wanted to spend his life with.

So why had she been so afraid?

* * *

Steve was on his knees in front of her. Her old ring was in his hand. It was a modest ring bought with a modest artist's salary, but to her it looked like the greatest treasure in the world. How many times in your life have you been offered something that you loved so much, but thought you had lost forever? She didn't know what to think or what to say, so she fell to her knees in front of Steve. She threw her arms around him and started to hyperventilate. She heard Steve and a few of the onlookers laughing. She would have been laughing herself if she could breathe. She felt like she was on of those hidden camera prank shows. She had a lot of surprises in her life. Everything from being kidnapped by the Red Skull to having Spider-man punched through her window when she still lived in Brooklyn. This one topped them all.

"I… I…" Bernie tried to talk, tears in her eyes.

"Take a breath, Bernie. Relax. You don't have to answer right away."

"I… I don't?" She said.

"No you don't." Steve said "We can go get some coffee. We can talk about it. I just wanted you to know that I was serious about it. I didn't mean to put you on the spot."

"I… could use some coffee." Bernie said.

So they did talk about it. She went from accepting to refusing and back again. He told her all the reasons why he thought they should. She told him all the reasons why she thought they should. He told her the reasons why they should wait, and she told him how many of those she agreed with. At the end of it, when everything was laid out on the table, it all came down to one thing: They loved each other but there would never be a good time for them.

"I was so happy when you revealed that you were Captain America." Bernie told him "It was selfish of me, because I didn't want to keep the secret anymore. Now… now I wish that you hadn't done it. I wish that everything could go back to the way it was."

"It can't. This is the way things are. Steve Rogers is Captain America. Everybody knows that. There can't be one without the other."

"I guess that just means that I get two for the price of one, and I love them both." Bernie laughed.

"They both love you too." Steve said "You're very lucky."

"I wish it was that simple. There is… I don't know. What about the rest of them?" Bernie said with a little bit of fear.

"Who?" Steve asked.

"All your other women." Bernie asked "I know I have no right to ask, because I haven't exactly had a cold bed all these years, but if we are going to be married…"

"You know that I'm not that kind of guy at all, Bernie. There is only room for one woman in my life."

"Barely room for one." Bernie laughed, but then got very solemn "What about six months from now, when Sharon comes back with a secret mission or Rachel shows up with two tickets to South America with the fate of the world on the line?"

Steve sighed "Things are resolved with Sharon. I know where I stand there, but honestly I have not… quite resolved things with Rachel. You have to know, though, that I never was as involved with them like I am with you."

"No, Steve… you were. It was just different with them because you had so much in common with them. So many things to do with them! Places to go a see, people to fight, causes to champion. You never had to worry about settling down with them, because life with them was a constant adventure!"

"It wasn't that at all, Bernie. It was different with them, but that was because it wasn't so deep. It wasn't so real."

"Maybe you just never gave them a chance." Bernie said "Don't get me wrong. I'm glad that you didn't because I do love you so much, but I'm worried about how you will feel in the future."

"Nothing will ever change the way I feel about you, Bernie. There is a lot of water under the bridge between you and me but I'm certain that we can make it work."

"If I make you a deal, Steve, will you take it?" Bernie asked.

"What kind of deal?"

"An important one."

"I'll do my best."

"You take a few months, and do whatever you do, and if at the end of that time you still feel the way that you do tonight… if you bring that ring back to me I'll take it. I'll be your wife and we can grow old and wrinkly together. I promise you that, Steve, if you can promise me."

Steve looked like he was pondering the most difficult of decisions. Most men would be delighted to be let off the hook like this, but it really seemed to be bothering him.

"Bernie… Every time I have put something off like this I've regretted it. I have regretted all the time that we have spent apart since we broke up the first time. I don't know how any good can come of this, but if this is what you want I promise you this much… I'll bring this ring back on our anniversary."

She believed him.

That night had been the last time that she saw him. They had made love all night, desperately clinging to each other like wild horses were trying to pull them apart. Sometime in the early morning he had gotten up and kissed her goodbye where she lay. She had reached up to stroke his freshly shaven cheek, smelling his still fresh aftershave. She had wanted to pull him back down to the bed, but she knew what he had to do. He had to go to Washington DC and save the Avengers so that the Avengers could save the world. So that everybody could sleep at night in a world as uncertain as this. He kissed her lips, kissed her cheek, and then he whispered softly in her ear.

"I'll be back for you." He said.

* * *

Bernie was caught in traffic.

There was some things that would never change about New York. This was both comforting and frustrating. As she watched, pedestrians crossed the street in an endless stream four cars ahead of her. She obviously wasn't going anywhere for a while. She turned on the radio hoping for some good tunes, but she was disappointed. This was New York, after all, and it was drive time.

"Captain America has finally shown himself for the liberal stooge he has always been!" Rush Limbaugh yelled at an outraged caller. "You can't tell me that this man's attacks on our great President were not motivated by his liberal agenda!"

She snapped to another station.

"Captain America had an opportunity to oppose an unjust administration policy and instead he quit!" A caller called in to Pacifica radio "He is a proto fascist! He always has been one and he always will be one, backing whatever fascist is in the white house!"

She snapped the knob again.

"So Captain America has the Super Soldier Serum." Howard Stern said "Do you think that it makes all of him super? How would you like to have him co-star with you in your next feature, Jenna? I hear he's unemployed, after all."

"That would be so great, Howard! I hear he's a living legend!"

She snapped off the radio in disgust, and only then realized that traffic was moving again.

How could she tell Jennifer Walters the truth? How could she tell her how she had been crying herself to sleep every night? How could she tell her that she couldn't stand the looks of pity she was getting from everybody? Was the hurt, the heartbreak so obvious in her face that everyone could see what she was denying herself? In all the time that they had been together Steve had never lied to her. At least not since she first discovered his identity. It was not in him to be duplicitous or false. But there was one thing that she could not deny, and that was the date in her personal calendar. It was January 19th.

Their anniversary was Christmas day.

* * *

While all the rest of this was happening, while all these other conflicts and resolutions were taking place, at least there was one man who had achieved a measure of peace. He looked out at the tropical sunset and took a deep breath. It had been a long, hard day's work. It was a disaster here and would continue to be a disaster for some time. He was doing everything that he could, and it would have to be enough. There were still lost people to find, trapped children to rescue, and families that had given up hope to comfort. He had not done any of this as Captain America, but rather as Steve Rogers. Not as a super hero, but as a red cross volunteer. He had not worn his costume since that day in Washington DC. He had traveled halfway across the world to help out any way that he could, because that was the sort of man that he was.

Even he could only work day and night for so long. He had lasted longer than they thought he would. Experience had told him exactly how long he could. There were days during the war when he thought that the only thing that kept him conscious was fear and strong Army coffee. At the end of this day, as the sun went down, he knew that he was done. This was a time for him. Time enough to think about the past, the present, and the future all together. Time enough to regret and time enough to hope. He had not seen the sunset from this point since 1942, when the Japanese were trying to push him and all the other troops off the beach and into the ocean. The smashed trees and the debris made it look almost as bad as it had that day. The ocean and the sunset, however, were the same. Beautiful and terrible, they would never change.

Steve Rogers felt a soft hand slip into his and grip it firmly. He turned and looked into the green eyes of Rachel Leighton as she smiled at him.

"Some day, huh?" She said, tired to her bones.

"One hell of a day." Steve agreed.

"Why did you invite me along for this?" Rachel asked. It was a question that had hung between them since they first heard news of the disaster.

Steve looked at her with a fatigued smile, remembering that day.

* * *

"Ca… Steve…" Rachel had said in surprise when she opened the door, one hand over her mouth to catch her gasp.

"Hello Rachel." He had said, rubbing his five o clock shadow with one hand "I know that this isn't the best hour…"

"No. It's fine. Come in!" She said, pulling his arm with surprising strength.

He showed up at her apartment the night after she had been released from the hospital. She had not been prepared to see him and she had not been prepared to see her. She knew what had happened with the Avengers by seeing it in the news, but he didn't want to talk about it. He had been in civilian clothes ever since he took off his uniform back at Washington DC. Everything hung between them like a dark cloud. This was their first opportunity to really talk things over and neither one of them knew exactly what to say. He noticed that she had been packing and knew that he had to ask the question.

"How did you find me?" She asked.

"Asp visited you in the hospital. She gave me your phone number and address when we spoke. Just in case something happened."

"I guess it is a good thing... because something did, didn't it?" Rachel said.

"I interrupted something." Steve observed. "Where are you heading off to?"

"I just need to get away." Rachel said "I just can't stay here anymore… things being like they are."

"I know exactly what you mean." Steve said "Can I help you with your bags?"

"Such a gentleman." Rachel laughed "I'm a pretty strong girl myself. I can manage."

"Then how would you like some company?" Steve asked.

Rachel didn't know what to say.

"When I visited you… in the hospital." Steve said "You had not regained consciousness yet. The Avengers finally told me that you had been there for me… once they couldn't hide it anymore. It doesn't matter now, because I'm not an Avenger anymore. All that matters is that you were there for me and I want to be there for you."

"Oh." Rachel said in shock. "I don't know."

"Maybe we can figure things out together." Cap said solemnly.

"I would really like that." Diamond said with a little smile.

* * *

The week that they had spent in Seattle was like a combination between a vacation and an awkward getting-to-know-you-again trip. It had been an off the cuff idea that had developed into a good time. The only reason that they had picked Seattle was because it was as far away as they could get from New York without getting a plane ticket for Alaska. They had traveled under assumed names that Diamondback's criminal associates had somehow dug up. They had gone Skiing at Mount Baker, hiking in the Olympia national forest, and visited the Experience Music Project. Rachel laughed her ass off when she saw the look on Steve's face when he heard how Jimi Hendrix played the national anthem. Neither of them had any family to visit, so they spent the holidays together in the Pacific Northwest. They were like Bonnie and Clyde on the run, and had almost forgotten that Captain America or Diamondback existed at all until they heard the breaking news on Christmas day.

Almost a half a million people died in a single, horrible day.

* * *

"I never got the chance to tell you how I really felt about you, so I thought that I would show you instead." Steve said. He wished that he had put it better, but once said it could not be unsaid.

"It's been terrible, but I'm glad I came." Rachel said, pushing her hair out of her eyes as the wind blew it back in. "All this has really put things in perspective for me."

"We could all use a change of perspective, now and then." Steve said as he put his arm around Rachel.

They had grown close over the last month, saving lives where they could and mourning those lost when they could not. Still, they had only done it as companions. Friends and allies, just like the old days. He had filled her in on the parts of his story that she was unaware of, and she had totally understood why he had chosen to come to the Philippine islands to help the victims of this disaster. It was here, after all, where he had first faced the crucible that formed him into the man that Rachel Leighton had fallen in love with. For all the complications that had made their relationship difficult, there was something between them they neither of them could deny. As the sun set on another day this was their night to find out what that was.

Steve Rogers was the one that held Rachel tight, gently stroking her face as their lips drew closer together. They were so close that they could feel each other's warmth. Maybe Bernie had been right after all. Maybe he had never really given Rachel a chance. He had told Bernie that there would never be a good time for them, and he was right. It was the same for him and Rachel. If they had learned anything from these sad events it was that they had to make the best of the time that they were given. He kissed Rachel's lips softly, and as she held him tight he did his best to ignore the ghosts of the past.

Captain America was an Avenger no more, and it was finally up to him to decide who he wanted to be.

**Next: The Invaders**

_**Can Steve Rogers outrun his past forever? What is the Sinister Syndicate's dastardly plan? Who will win the battle for the heart of Captain America? Tune in next week, true believers!**_


	15. The Invaders

**Author's Notes:**

**Thank all of you who have been following this story so faithfully and reviewing so candidly. I appreciate it a lot and hope that I can keep getting better. I'm still new to this and have to figure out a lot of things as I go along. Even though I try to update weekly sometimes the war won't let me. I just got back from a crazy mission in Baghdad and yet I somehow had time to write two chapters this week. Please enjoy and let me know how you feel about the direction the story is taking. I had it plotted out for 12 chapters but now find myself in uncharted territory.**

**Shout outs:**

**Kaprou: Thank you very much for your detailed review, and for helping me find your fiction. It seems to me that you have created almost your own fanfiction continum and given me quite a lot to read.**

**PRO: You have the ability to say everything about a chapter in two words! I'm looking forward to your next story andstill am wondering how I can top the "man flesh" comment.**

**Hellion: I'm glad that you dig the supporting charicters and hope that I can keep up the standard for you.**

Without further ado...

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Chapter 13: The Invaders**

Sam Wilson felt like a tourist.

For the last week Sam had only one purpose in life, and that was to track Captain America. He had followed a trail of eyewitness sightings that Nick Fury had compiled from DC to New York to Seattle. He had wasted three days and countless frequent flyer miles on chasing leads to other parts of the country where he might have gone to hide out. Hiram had not seen him ever since the end of the Captain America hotline, and admitted that he had a falling out with Cap some time ago. Dead end. He tracked down distant friends such as Vagabond, Free Spirit, Jack Flagg, and none of them had seen hide nor hair of him. Another dead end. His unsuccessful attempt to find out if Bernie knew anything about Steve's whereabouts had been embarrassing. She had noticed the SHIELD agents shadowing her and wanted to know why Nick didn't just come and ask himself. She had been very short with him, almost irritated that Fury would send him. They had been friends, but she had mostly known him through Steve. That seemed to be the very problem. She hadn't said so, but it seemed to Sam that the lady was very unhappy with Steve right now.

He had gone to Seattle on nothing more than a hunch, remembering that Steve had gone to the Pacific Northwest once before when he had a falling out with the Government. The only guy that he might have gone to if he needed anything was James Rhodes, who was running Stark Solutions out of Tacoma. The two of them had something of a tense relationship, which Sam didn't understand. Rhodes was a gung-ho ex combat pilot, ex-Iron Man, ex-War Machine, current Stark boot licker. Falcon had once made a comment to him about why he had never tried to assume his own identity as a super hero, and Jim had taken it the wrong way. He had come back asking why Falcon never tried to be any thing but a replacement for Bucky. Ever since then their relationship had been strained, and Sam wished that there was something that he could do about it. He doubted it, though, because both he and Rhodes were too stubborn.

Sam was waiting in his office when Rhodes walked in. Even though he didn't have his Avengers ID anymore he was still well enough known as a super hero that he was able to talk his way in.

"How's it hangin' Falcon?" Rhodes said when he saw who was visiting him.

Sam frowned, not the least bit amused.

"I'm not here for a social call, Rhodes." Sam said.

"Too bad. I've got the Starbucks and canapés all laid out too." Jim said, crossing his arms across his chest like a drill sergeant inspecting his troops.

"You don't seem surprised to see me."

"Why should I be? Wherever he goes you're not far behind."

"So Steve was here."

"Yes he was. What can I do for you, Mr. Wilson?" Rhodes had dropped all pretense of schoolyard affability.

"I need to know where he is." Falcon said.

"You mean that Fury needs to know where he is." Rhodes said.

Falcon frowned again, exhaling deeply. How could a secret organization keep no secrets? "What do you mean." Falcon lied.

"Don't hand me that. I don't need to be a mind reader to know that you're Fury's boy too." Jim Rhodes said as he uncrossed his arms and made a mockery of a salute.

"What do you mean boy, mother(shutyomouth)!" Falcon yelled, losing his composure.

"Whoa, boy. You better watch your language round here. The white folks might think that something impolite is going down in this room." Rhodes laughed, seeming to be pleased at pushing Falcon's buttons.

"I don't have time for your games, I don't have time for your bull, I'm just looking for Steve." Falcon said, taking a breath. "Do you know where he is."

"Maybe I do and maybe I don't. The question is why should I tell you?" Rhodes said "The man does not want to be found. He would have called you up on that sidekick decoder ring he gave you if he needed your help."

Falcon quickly stepped forward and grabbed the front of Rhodes shirt, finally sick of taking the man's crap.

"You have five seconds to tell me what you know and then I start breaking things." Sam said, hoping that it was a properly thinly veiled threat for the man to understand.

"You better get your hand off me, boy." Rhodes snarled "You want to mess with me and I WILL make a man out of you."

"I see your manicure, bitch." Sam barked "You wouldn't want to break a nail."

Rhodes punched him in the face, and Sam staggered back.

"You… you snuck me!" Sam spit out as the two Rhodes he saw coalesced back into one pissed off form.

"I think that you've overstayed your welcome, Uncle Sam." Rhodes breathed "Or maybe I should call you Uncle Tom."

Falcon body-slammed Rhodes through a glass coffee table, and it wasn't until the glass broke that Jim understood what was happening.

"Bitch! Without your armor you ain't worth a warm cup a piss!" Falcon yelled, standing over the dazed Rhodes.

Sam never saw the leg sweep coming before he hit the rug. As the huge form of Rhodes blocked out the lights above him, Sam noticed for the first time that Jim Rhodes was one big bastard. He kicked up a leg and caught Rhodes right in the diaphragm, hearing the wind get knocked out of the man's lungs with a satisfying "Whoop!" He grabbed the big man's arms and rolled backward, flipping him onto his back and landing on top of him in the mount. As they grappled and punched the profanity was flowing pretty thick until they felt themselves being separated. Falcon didn't realize his mistake until he saw that he was surrounded by Stark Solutions Security. It looked like Rhodes had finally had enough and pushed the panic button. Thinking it over, he probably would have done the same thing if he had one. The two of them had been fighting like women and he was momentarily ashamed of himself. It was a good thing that neither one of them had long hair or it probably would have gotten pulled.

He heard a couple of the guards laughing like Beavis and Butthead "huh huh huh… he referred to the boss as 'bitch'. That was cool."

"So I take it that you had your ass kicked enough." Sam said calmly as he was enveloped in security guard arms.

"Shut up!" Rhodes barked trying to fight his way free of the guard who were holding him back "I'm not done with your fine feathered ass!"

Outside the window, Redwing circled nervously. She was sending thoughts of surprise and concern, but Sam told her not to worry about it.

"Tell me what I want to know, and I'll go away." Falcon demanded.

"No, let me tell you something!" Rhodes said, shrugging off his guards "Number one… this is my turf you're gonna pay for that damn coffee table. Number two… I'm going to kick your ass til your nose bleeds. Number three… you want Cap? You got him. I hope that you like Manila this time of year." Rhodes said, cracking his knuckles.

This wasn't Sam's day, and tomorrow didn't look good either.

* * *

After getting the ass kicking of his life Sam woke up on a slow boat to China… or rather a fast lear jet to the Philippines. No wonder Tony had to break the Avengers trust fund financing trips like this. Sam was sure that Redwing was three different colors of pissed to be flying around the Pacific Northwest waiting for him to get back. He had managed to send that thought before losing consciousness. They had stomped in his butthole like a gang initiation. When he groped around in his pocket it was no surprise that his wallet was gone. He had to remember not to mess with Rhodes again. He could not, for the life of him, figure out why the hell Cap was in the Philippines. Maybe he wasn't. Maybe Rhodes was just marooning him. He remembered vaguely that he had told someone to just kick him out of the side door as they went by. He hoped that he was kidding, because you could not parachute from a Learjet and he left his wings in his luggage in Seattle.

As it turned out, they landed on an airstrip before kicking him out on the tarmac.

At least Falcon didn't feel like a tourist anymore. Wandering down the streets of the flood-ravaged Philippines with no ID, no money, and no hope, he had to find a Captain America in a haystack. How hard could it be? He was as super hero, a super agent, and an Avenger. Surely he could ask a few questions to the right people and everything would fall into place. That was before one of the locals started to talk to him in Tagalog. He didn't speak Tagalog. His stomach grumbled, as if on cue. He was hungry, tired, beaten, and poor. It was like Harlem all over again. It looked like it was going to be a long day.

* * *

That night the chirruping of cicadas was the only thing that could be heard in the jungle. Even the birds and the screaming monkey-things in the trees were silent. That is how the camp's guard knew that something was wrong. He knew that something was out there, but he didn't know what. That was why he kept scanning his sector of fire ever more vigilantly. The guard in the other tower would take care of his corner, he knew, and he had to take care of his. He had no way of knowing that the guard in that tower had already been rendered unconscious with a blowgun dart that, when examined, would seem to be very diamond-like in appearance. When the strong hand clamped over his mouth and the two hard fingers jammed into a tangle of nerves at the base of his skull he didn't even have time to be surprised before he plunged into darkness.

"Nice." Diamondback whispered.

"Maybe not, but it was painless." Cap insisted.

The man would be fine in an hour or two. Captain America had trained many of his partners over the years dozens of similar ways to disable an enemy without killing them. None of them would hurt or injure the target. Most of his pupils, however, seemed to prefer the hundreds of ways that did. Maybe, in this instance, hurting these men would not be such a bad thing. He needed to know for sure, though. He couldn't act until he knew for sure, and that was why he and Rachel had finally gotten into costume. He was wearing the subdued version of his costume that he wore rarely for night missions. Black instead of blue, neutral gray instead of white, brown instead of red. Rachel said that she liked it; that it was recognizable without attracting undue attention. Cap insisted that, on most missions, the color scheme was important. That attracting attention was essential. This was a different kind of mission, however.

Cap put one finger to his lips as they huddled in some underbrush. He heard the roving guards a moment before they passed by, and they sprang on them when they did. Cap ripped the rifle away from one of them and spear handed him right under the jaw. Diamond jabbed the other with another of her anesthetic-tipped diamonds. They left the two unconscious men in the brush and continued their infiltration. When he finally saw what was within the barbed wire confines of the camp, there could not longer be any doubt what this camp was. Cap was trembling with rage, and when he looked over he saw Rachel's red lips pressed into a hard, white line.

Inside the barbed wire were hundreds of children orphaned by the flood. Hundreds of children kidnapped in the chaos. Children between the ages of 2 and 11 destined for sexual slavery in southeast Asia. Philippine children were at a premium in Thailand, where local children could be bought from their parents for as little as 50 dollars. They huddled there in the dirt like miniature prisoners of war, sobbing with confusion and bewilderment. Cap knew what he had to do, but even as he looked at the troubled expression on Diamond's face he knew that it would be difficult. There were more than a hundred heavily armed mercenaries in this compound, and the two of them had no chance of getting them all before the alarm was sounded and bullets started flying. If they did that they could not guarantee the children's safety. They had to stick to the plan. They got into position and Cap opened the communicator device he had been given.

"Demise." Cap said the single word with a heavy heart.

It was almost fifteen minutes later that the shots started ringing out. The two platoons tried their best to quietly crawl up on the enemy positions and make quiet work of them, but it only took one slip up and everybody in the camp was firing. As he expected, a maniacal guard came down the steps from the ramshackle house where he had been sleeping and cocked his rifle, fully prepared to gun down the children. Cap sprang between the man and his victims, the rounds that had been intended for them tearing through the black sack he had tied over his shield and exposing the symbol of the white star for the man to see. As soon at he ran out of ammunition that same shield flew though the air and hit him between the eyes, ricocheted off his head and clipped another man that was running to the barbed wire. Cap caught it effortlessly on the second bounce. Diamondback still couldn't believe how he did that. She threw an explosive diamond at the support of the central tower - watching with satisfaction as the thing fell over like a chain sawed tree.

Men in the familiar uniforms of Silver Sable's Wild Pack started flooding into the base within minutes, guns blazing and mercenaries falling left and right. Cap did his best to insure that any stray bullets didn't find their way into the children's pen as Diamondback made certain that the terrified and confused youngsters stayed prone on the ground. A mercenary came running up to him, begging for help in perfect English. He got a perfect right hook for his trouble.

It was over before it began. The mercs that were left threw down their weapons and prepared to suffer the consequences of their actions. A silver helicopter landed nearby and Sable exited, looking over the chaos and wreckage like a satisfied General Patton. As the newly captured prisoners were lined up and searched, Sable stopped to spit in one of their faces before kicking him in the groin.

"Whoa. She's a real prize, isn't she?" Rachel remarked.

Cap was too busy being hugged by grateful children to notice. Even though his costume was a little different, they all recognized him and knew that he was there to rescue them. They interspersed his name with bursts of Tagalog, Spanish, and a little bit of baby talk. One of them was a little blonde American girl that must have been traveling with her family.

"You're the best, Captain America. You saved us!" The little girl sobbed "Thank you thank you thank you so much."

Rachel smiled at the little girl, never happier to be treated like chopped liver.

"Well done, Captain." Sable said in her implacable accent. "We didn't suffer a single casualty and didn't lose a single child. I wish that all of our operations were this effective."

"I'm glad to be of service." Cap said modestly, extracting himself from some of the children as they regarded the buxom-yet-athletic woman in the skin-tight polished silver body stocking.

"There are many camps like this all over the world. I would love your assistance in smashing all of them. Are you certain that you would not reconsider my proposition? I daresay that you would be a unique addition to my organization."

Cap looked over at Battlestar, standing guard next to her helicopter, and somehow doubted that was entirely accurate. Crippler was walking around the prisoners tapping his iron baton in one hand, a sadistic smile spreading over his blood splattered face. Steve had already told the sadist that he wouldn't tolerate any mistreatment of the prisoners no matter what they were guilty of. The man looked dangerously close to overstepping his bounds. The Wild Pack had done good work here, but he did not approve of all of their methods.

"I'm sorry, Sable." Cap said with as much sincerity as he could manage "I am not a soldier for hire. It was great working with you on this but I'm afraid that I cannot represent my country while working for a mercenary agency of a foreign power."

Silver Sable suddenly seemed very cold, which was more like her typical personality as Rachel had known her. She had not liked the way that she was glad handing Steve, almost attempting to seduce him at times, and pointedly ignoring her. Now that Cap had served her a big huge plateful of blunt honesty it looked like the bitch was back. Rachel wouldn't have it any other way. That low cut number she had worn to the pre operation briefing was totally shameless. As if her body stocking left anything to the imagination anyway.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Captain." Sable said curtly "Although, if I were to point something out, the Red Cross is based in Switzerland. Good evening."

Cap and Rachel looked at each other with tired understanding as Silver Sable marched away. They had both come to the archipelago as aid workers shipped over by Jim Rhodes with a contingent of the American Red Cross. Silver Sable had been aghast when she discovered them in those circumstances. She had come months before the typhoon to combat this ring of slavers, paid by a grant from International Agencies and the Philippine government. She had stumbled on them when she heard a story about an exceptionally strong aid worker. She had spoken so passionately to Steve about the plight of the children that she had convinced him to put on the uniform again. She insisted that she was interested in Steve Rogers and not Captain America. She said that his unique skills, training, and experience, were more important than what costumed identity he assumed. Even as she offered him a new, anonymous identity he refused. He had learned through years of hardship and struggle exactly how important Captain America was. He could never be a member of her Wild Pack.

"Are you ready to go?" She asked him.

"Ready when you are." He replied, waving to the children as members of the Wild Pack brought them blankets and food.

As Cap walked by the prisoners he saw Crippler beating a prisoner with his baton. The flat-topped pain junkie was conscious for another second before the star spangled shield flew through the air. Crippler saw it coming and turned just in time to have the disc clip him right in the temple. He would wake up a day later, treasuring the pain of his concussion. Cap caught the rebounding shield and turned to the other members of the Wild Pack; who were looking at him with differing levels of distain, anger, embarrassment, and surprise.

"No matter what these men have done, they are still men! If you treat them like animals you are no better than animals yourselves! They have surrendered at they will face justice! The next man I see mistreating a prisoner isn't going to get off as easily as Crippler. Fight your enemy! Do not become your enemy!" Cap bellowed to all of them, voice strong and confident.

"Captain…" Sable said from nearby "May I speak with you?"

"Say your piece." Cap said, reigning in his anger as he marched toward her.

"These are my soldiers, and these men may have information that could lead us to other camps. Given your country's recent track record on treatment of prisoners I hardly think…"

"Don't you dare lecture me, Sable!" Cap yelled, startling the Symkarian mercenary.

"Captain…"

"I was fighting the Nazis before you were born! You have no idea of the things I have seen! It all starts at the level of the soldier, but it is the responsibility of the command! Leaders that tolerate it and look the other way are failures as leaders! It is a slippery slope, and once you can justify the mistreatment of one prisoner for any reason you can justify anything at all! Genocide, holocaust, whatever gets the job done, right!" Cap almost flushed with fury.

"Captain… perhaps it is a good thing that you have not accepted my offer." Sable said "You are misguided. These men are not soldiers, but criminals. I had hoped that your recent experiences would curb your idealism. The world is a cold, hard, place. You should know that better than anyone. I do not think that you are… pragmatic enough to be a good fit in my organization." Sable said with an expression that did not match her words or tone.

"You mean crazy enough." Rachel added helpfully.

Sable glowered at the reformed criminal.

"Regardless of what you think, Sable, my ideals have a place in the world. How many of the men here surrendered because they saw me here and believed that I could guarantee their safety? Criminals or not, they are at our mercy and we must show them that mercy. The world is not as hard and cold as you believe it to be by nature. It is the decisions of men that make it so."

"We will have to agree to disagree, Captain." Sable said gruffly.

"If that is how you want it, but I am not leaving until I am certain that both these men and the children are in the hands of the proper authorities." Cap insisted.

"Very well, Captain." Silver snapped, marching back to her men.

"So this is what it really feels like to be a good guy. " Rachel asked, fatigue and a strange sense of happiness in her voice.

"Yes, I think it is." Cap said after a moment of thought.

"I can see why you're hooked on it." Rachel said with a smile.

* * *

Power Princess was just a name to her. It didn't even really mean much to her. It was just what Hyperion had called her and somehow it stuck. She knew next to nothing about the world that he claimed to come from; and would think he was lying about the whole thing if the Cowl, Speed Demon, and Dr. Spectrum had not all insisted it was true. Regardless of the fact, the only world she had known was the one that the Inhumans allowed her to know. Growing up alternately in the Himalayan mountains and the blue area of the moon, she had been isolated from the outside world. The terrigen mists administered to her when she reached puberty did not affect her as greatly as other inhumans. All that they had done was increase her strength and durability, as well as giving her the ability to fly. In a society as filled with fantastic gifts and varied appearances as the inhumans she seemed almost a pariah. It was not long before she escaped to seek her fortunes in the human world. She quickly learned to despise it, just as she was learning to despise Hyperion's affection.

"You refuse me again!" Hyperion yelled "But you are constantly… mooning over one of our greatest enemies!"

With a sweep of his arm the superhuman indicated the scrapbook that Princess was compiling on Captain America. Every news article and photograph that she could find was dutifully inserted into the scrapbook with helpful notes and diagrams that only she could understand. Hyperion hated the book and wanted to incinerate it with his atomic vision.

"I am not mooning over him. I am studying him." Princess insisted.

"No. Studying is reading a book every now and then. This is an obsession."

"Your jealousy is very unbecoming, Hyperion."

"Jealousy? Is it jealous to be concerned for those you love?"

"Though you profess to love me, Hyperion, I truly doubt that you know the meaning of the word." Zarda snorted.

"What would you know about love?" Hyperion snatched her by the arm.

"More that you could imagine." She said gravely.

"Ever since he handed you your ass you've thought of nothing but him! Does that mean if I beat you then you will love me again?" Hyperion snarled.

Power Princess pulled her arm away from him and suggestively offered her body as her eyes gleamed with fury "If you want me so badly, why don't you just take me? If you think that you are man enough to take me, then come! I will fight you every step of the way! If you defeat me, maybe you are more worthy than I think."

"You are… cruel… monstrous." Hyperion growled "I will never do that. I may be a villain, but I'm not a monster." Hyperion looked at her with a mix of emotions ranging from longing to fury, but then turned his back to her and walked to the door.

"I knew you would not!" Zarda laughed "You aren't a real man. You aren't even a man at all. You are a terrible lover, bashful and careful as if you are afraid to break something! I will find a real man, and give birth to a god!"

Hyperion slammed the door behind him, cutting off her ranting. Didn't she understand the strength and power at his fingertips? How careful he had to be not to destroy everything he touched? She had finally shattered his hopes. He thought that he could make her see… that if he was kind enough, good enough to her that she would accept him and it could all be like he remembered. But it wasn't possible. She wasn't Zarda, at least not from the memories that he was cursed with. She wasn't her. Zarda was kind and gentle, devoted to her husband even when he had aged away to nothing. Zarda was a heroine, not a madwomen. Hyperion was truly alone in this world. Alone with nothing but his hatred.

* * *

After the prisoners and children were in the custody of the Philippine Authorities Cap and Rachel parted ways with Silver Sable and the Wild Pack, who had another mission in Singapore. They were not due back to the Red Cross compound until later that morning, so as the sun was a sliver on the horizon they stripped into swimsuits and dove into the blue pacific waters. They were totally alone, because the inhabitants of this island had come to be afraid of the ocean recently. Not far from the beautiful, unchanging beach was a devastated civilization. Steve turned his eyes away from it for a moment and saw Rachel beckoning to him in her bikini, waist deep in water. There was sadness in the world, to be sure, but there was also beauty.

"How about we race to that point?" Rachel suggested, pointing out to the end of the cove.

"Sure… if you think that you can keep up with me." Cap said with more confidence than arrogance evident.

"You better worry about keeping up with me!" Rachel said, starting to swim before the gun went off.

Cap had never had a swimming competition with another person who had the Super Soldier Serum, and was surprised at how Rachel kept up with him. She trained hard herself, but nowhere near his level. Then again, she was younger than him physically as well as chronologically. He couldn't chalk it up to recovering from his injuries since she had a coma of her own that was worth mentioning. He just had to give credit where credit was due, because even without the serum Rachel had been a natural athlete.

"Geez, Steve, I thought that you could do better than that! You barely beat me." Rachel said as she got out of the water. Droplets were glistening all over her body where the bikini didn't cover it.

"You haven't seen my best yet!" Steve admitted.

"How about a foot race then!" She yelled, taking off running at a pace that would drop the jaw of an Olympian.

Steve hauled ass after her, dodging the sand she was kicking up even as he was throwing clods of his own. He finally got a hold of her around her waist and pulled her down into the waves like a tackling linebacker.

"No fair!" She laughed, spitting out salt water as he landed on top of her and pinned her down "I didn't say anything about Greco-Roman wrestling!"

Her lips tasted sweet and salty as he kissed them. She felt her soft hand on his cheek and her tongue licked at his lips as they parted, as if treasuring the taste. He felt with his hand that her top had come undone. Another one of life's happy accidents? In their time together they had just tried to keep it friendly, but these last two days had been different. Steve didn't know what he wanted to do, but he did know what he felt like doing.

"Your top…" He pointed out chivalrously between kisses.

"Its ok." Rachel insisted.

"Are you sure?" He asked.

"Yes" Rachel said as the tide crashed in on them "Yes. Yes. Oh, by the way… yes."

Steve laughed.

"I've waited a long time for this, Steve. If this is going to be our first time, I can't think of a better time." She said with sincerity.

"All this time… I mean… you only knew Captain America…" Steve tried to explain his last, feeble misgivings between kisses.

"I know you, Steve. The two of you were never any different to me. In everything you did your decency and kindness was what I saw. Your compassion and your love. I never thought that a man could be like that. I never thought that I would meet a man like you. I want you, Steve." She gasped.

He looked into her eyes, green like twin emeralds, and saw that she meant it. In all those years since a Serpent Society member in a pink leotard tried to choke him to death with her legs, in all the ups and downs that they had faced since, who would have thought that it would come down to this? On the beach, just like _From here to eternity. _He kissed her lips, her cheeks, her ears, and her eyelids. She stroked him so gently with those hands that had been so deadly to the wrong people. The water rushed over them and her top drifted off. It would be a real bitch finding it later, but they weren't thinking about it at the time. As the sun rose Rachel and Steve consummated a love that had been slow to grow, but no less beautiful because of that.

Rachel cried out so loud that a nearby tourist taking pictures thought that it was a flock of seagulls, yet no such birds were anywhere to be seen.

* * *

When Steve and Rachel returned to the Red Cross compound they found that they had a friend waiting for them. While they were out all night hunting mercenaries and freeing their victims Sam Wilson was just trying to find a place to sleep, and the Red Cross had provided it. When they found Sam the Cross had put him to work on an electric pump that helped some of the trapped floodwater rush back out to sea. He looked like he had seen better times. Steve was sure that he hadn't been that this badly bruised after his fight with the Grey Gargoyle. The Falcon waved them down when he saw them coming, smiling as if he had finally found the object of a quest. He dropped the pump and rushed toward them, almost hugging Steve in the process but settling on grabbing his shoulders.

"There you are, you old coot!" Sam laughed "You have no idea how tough it was to track you down."

"Well… I hope it was a little hard. I did do my best to cover my tracks. For all the good it did." Steve said.

"No! Be proud, because it was really tough going." Falcon insisted.

"It looks like you have had one of those days, Sam." Rachel said.

"One of those weeks is more like it." Sam whistled. "Are you two together again?"

Steve gulped. After what they had just done what could he say?

"We're just… getting to know each other again." Rachel saved him.

_In the biblical sense, of course. _Sam thought with an inward smile, looking at Rachel's blinding afterglow.

"Why were you trying to find me?" Steve asked.

"Honest answer, because Fury told me to. Real answer, because I had my own reasons." Sam said "Fury wants you to join up with SHIELD again now that you aren't an Avenger anymore. As you can tell, I've already joined." Falcon said.

"I don't know about that." Steve said "I've had my problems with Nick in the past. More than once. I don't think that I'm ready to work with him again."

"It would be just like the old days, but I understand if you have to think about it." Falcon said "I had to do that myself, and if it hadn't been for wanting to find your myself I don't think that I would have."

"What about you?" Steve asked "What are your reasons?"

"I want you to rejoin the Avengers." Falcon said.

"What?" Diamondback said "But… I heard that you quit too."

"I had a change of heart." Sam said "The Avengers need you. The things that are going on in the world today… you can't just hide from them and hope that they will go away. You have to face them head on. You've already made your point. You have to stand up there in front of the Avengers and let everybody know that you won't give in. Put pressure on the administration to reinstate the Avengers that it blacklisted. You can make that a condition of your return, and the administration might fold just because it will make the bad publicity go away. Even if that won't happen, no one will ever be able to forget what the government did to the Avengers if you don't let them."

Cap was silent for a moment. "Maybe we should talk about this over some breakfast. You look hungry."

"You have no idea." Falcon said with a grin.

* * *

Janet Van Dyne was silent. Too silent, and that is how Kyle knew something was wrong. The last two months with Janet had been a strain. As co-chairperson she was always busy at Avengers mansion and rarely had the time to see him. When she had gotten opportunities she was often tired and distracted. He totally understood. As a member of the Defenders he had learned that when the time came to save the world you had to drop everything. He couldn't imagine the strain of having that responsibility constantly. Always vigilant, as it was, looking for a crisis before it develops instead of simply responding to it when it did. That was what made their two teams different, among other things. He still remembered the Avengers/Defenders war, which was all Hawkeye's fault. It was like one of those family secrets that nobody ever mentions but never really goes away. Still, he had hoped that now that she had given up the mantle of leadership things would get better between them. So far, that did not seem to be so.

"A penny for your thoughts." Kyle offered as they walked through the gallery looking at atrocious paintings by overpaid artists.

"A penny?" Wasp said coyly "You're a multimillionaire and that's your best offer?"

"It just seems like something is bothering you. It is bothering me that it is bothering you, and if it bothers me than it might start to bother you more. If we don't talk about it we'll get all hot and bothered then why bother with the whole thing?" Kyle rattled off comically.

Janet laughed, because he always made her laugh. It didn't mean that he wasn't right, though. She just didn't know how to say it to him. Didn't know now to ask the question that had been on her mind, in the back of her thoughts ever since the Commission tore the Avengers apart. How would he react?

Janet took his hands in hers, and they stood in front of a rare Salvadore Dali painting that reminded Kyle of something had seen when he was in Hell.

"Kyle…" she began, then clammed up.

"What is it?" Richmond asked "You can tell me."

"Why did you do it?" She finally asked, then once it was out there she found it easier to continue "Why did you help the government destroy the Avengers?"

Kyle almost blanched "What do you mean?"

"The government used you for leverage. They said that if we didn't submit to their demands then the Defenders had agreed to take our place."

"That's crazy." Kyle said "The Defenders… we couldn't arrange… we'd be late for our own funeral! The only reason the Hulk show up is to raid Doc's fridge! Namor quits every week! What are they talking about?"

"You mean that you didn't know about it?" Jan said.

"I'm not even the leader, so I can't speak for the whole team. We don't even have a leader. I'm just the money. I can't think of any of us that would have gotten in bed with the government. I don't think that the religious right would stand for us when they found out that the Son of Satan used to be on the team, and they never quite got used to Gargoyle either. Patsy was horrified when she found out what happened after we got back from Dormammu's dimension. Namor wasn't happy about it either. They both think that it would have gone differently if they were there."

"You weren't involved in it?"

"No. Of course not."

"I… I'm relieved to hear you say that, Kyle." Wasp said, looking at the sincerity in his eyes. She kissed him in front of the Dali painting, still holding his hands.

"Do you love me?" She asked, still holding both of his hands in front of his chest.

Kyle smiled. It was the first time she had asked that.

"Of course I do. Why would you think differently?"

"Then say it." she whispered.

"Janet Van Dyne, I love you." Nighthawk said, and they kissed again.

A nearby paparazzi snapped a shot and ran from the gallery's security. Flash photography around priceless works of art was a recipe for a beat-down. The next day that moment would be immortalized in the pages of People Magazine, and for years afterward it would be a picture that many would remember and talk about. Because in the long run, there is no stronger force than love in the universe. No stronger force than love, and nothing that captures the imagination of the nation more than a tragedy.

* * *

Rachel had gone to take a shower, the reasons for which being obvious to both Captain America and the Falcon.

Sam could not stop smiling when he was looking the two of them together. It was starting to annoy Steve but he couldn't really fault Sam for feeling that way. There was a lot of water under the bridge here. A lot of fights fought and dangers shared. For Sam's part, he had always been pulling for Steve and Rachel. The two of them had been through so much. They had met after he and Cap had decided to go their separate ways. The first time he had met Diamondback she had been wearing a little black exercise suit and some leg warmers, having been attacked and expelled from the Serpent Society during her aerobics. He saw how Cap had been almost physically straining himself not to look at her throughout that adventure. Nomad had made no such effort, and his girlfriend Vagabond was not happy about that! Sam had tried to keep his peeking subtle. Rachel was more than just beautiful, though. She was smart, tough, resourceful, and funny. He liked her, and he knew that Steve liked her. He didn't see the problems that a lot of others did with their relationship.

"Do you want to mention the elephant in the corner, or should I?" Steve finally asked.

"Go ahead, man. I've said what I've come to say." Sam smiled.

"Rachel and I… it has been something a long time… hmm…"

"You're tongue tied again, so let me say it for you." Sam busted in "You really dig the lady, she is absolutely crazy for you, neither of you have a ring on your finger, and you are grown. Did I miss anything?"

Steve looked at his old friend with a look that said both that he was surprised and yet that he shouldn't have been.

"No, I don't think that you did." Cap finally said.

"This isn't the 1940's Steve. The times have changed. I've tried to tell you this for years." Sam laughed and patted him on his rock hard shoulder.

"People sometimes think that you are a big stick in the mud. I just think that you are the last of the really good guys." Falcon said "It took you years to realize that you could be happy after all that happened to you."

"I still don't know if that is the case." Steve admitted.

"I think Rachel will be good for you. Heck, she might even teach you to dance."

"No force on earth could do that." Steve laughed. "Not unless they bring back the charleston or the foxtrot."

"Shoot! Those dances were twelve times as hard as what goes these days. You just gotta do a little something with the rhythm of yo hips!" Falcon said, demonstrating in front of a couple of stunned nurses that were walking by.

"Sam Sam Sam…" Steve said, handing him a Dr. Pepper from the cooler "That's ok. That's enough."

"You gotta loosen up a little, baby!" Sam said with a laugh as he popped open the soda.

"Lets talk about the Avengers." Steve finally capitulated "You know that I can't go back to them as well as I do."

"Why is that?" Falcon asked.

"Because whoever has planned all this was not targeting the Avengers. They were targeting me."

"What?"

"Daredevil came to me with the word on the street. The word that we weren't getting. He said that it was a private war between the Crimson Cowl and the two of us. That is why both of our identities have come out at close to the same time. That is why we keep being smeared in the media. That is why every time we slip up or fail it is front page news. The Cowl is tightening the noose. He wanted to destroy the Avengers only because they were an advantage that I had over him. If I stay away from them, he will focus his attentions elsewhere."

"Why you and Daredevil?" Falcon asked.

"I still don't know what the connection is. He is obviously a shared enemy of ours with immense resources and a grudge. I also think that he does not have much in the way of personal power, because he has not confronted either of us directly. Only poked his head out of the darkness long enough to let us know that he is there. He controls the Sinister Syndicate, he controls a certain percentage of financial interests, and he has a voice in government. These are the weapons he used to hamstring the Avengers and force me to face him alone."

"So that is what you are going to do? Play into his hands?"

"I have to." Cap insisted. "It is the only way that I can get him to take off his cowl, to lure him out of the cloak of secrecy that he has thrown up around himself."

"So you're going back to America to take him on yourself?" Sam said in a tone of disapproval.

"No. Not alone." Cap said "I want you to join me."

"Just me?"

"Captain America and the Falcon. Just like the old days. Full partners." Cap said, holding out his hand to Sam "You were the best partner that I ever had, and the only one that I need. I can't run back to the Avengers every time I have a problem, but I can't handle this alone either. I need your help, Sam. Will you help me?"

Falcon thought about it, about all the years that had come and gone. At first he had left to strike out on his own just to get out of Cap's shadow. At this point in his career, he felt like he had done that. He knew that Steve was being truthful about them being partners instead of him being just a sidekick, but sometimes Steve lost sight of just how iconic a figure he was. How much brighter he shined than all those around him. Could he go back to that? Could he deal with the fact that it was Captain America and the Falcon instead of the other way around?

"Yes." Sam finally said, taking his hand "I wouldn't miss it for the world."

* * *

Steve and Rachel had been scheduled to leave in the morning anyway, and it was easy to add Sam to the itinerary. The two of them had separate quarters throughout their stay in the islands, but Steve had given up his quarters for Sam to stay in. He had been bunking down on a cot under a lean-to that was not the best place to be now that torrential rains had began pummeling the island. This left the two of them sharing quarters for the first time, and they were just sitting there looking at each other awkwardly. The sound of the rain outside was soothing, but inside there was tension. He knew what he wanted to do, and she knew what she wanted to do, but neither one knew what the other one wanted to do. Men after all, are from Mars while women are from Venus. Even in a world where gods walk the earth and miracles happen everyday, there are still some things that you can count on.

"Gee is it late." Rachel finally said with a big, toothy smile.

"It is, isn't it?" Steve admitted.

"Big day tomorrow." She said with a stretch.

"Big day."

"Maybe we should… turn in." She said, looking at the single bed.

"Not a bad idea at all."

She walked toward him, but he could tell that she was nervous. She grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him to her. She was taller than Bernie, but still shorter than him. She looked up into his eyes as she pulled the shirt over his head. He did the same for her, and in no time they were in the bed looking at each other, much more calmly and comfortably. Knowing what was going to happen next was a great stress reliever. She did the honor of clicking off the single lamp that lit the little room and dove down under the covers. He dove down after her and in a few seconds they laughed at what was happening. The tension was gone but there was still a struggle. Just a couple of things to iron out and then they could get on with their night.

Two down, the rest of their lives to go.

Later that night Rachel reached for him and didn't find him. Then she realized that the light was on. She saw him sitting in the corner scribbling in the scratch pad that he had been toting around ever since Seattle. She had not asked to see it yet, because somehow she thought that there was something private about it. Then she realized something important. His back had always been to her when she was drawing, but this time he was facing her. She looked up to see if he was drawing her in her sleep and was shocked to see that his eyes were closed!

"Steve?" She asked in worry, watching his eyes pop open in surprise.

"Oh, Rachel. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you." Steve said, seeming not the least bit tired "I don't sleep more than about four hours a night."

"Even after all that we did?" Rachel smiled and blushed.

"Super Soldier Serum." He said with a shrug.

"I have it too, but I'm still bushed." Rachel laughed "What are you drawing?"

Cap looked down sadly and sighed. Rachel got up and circled around him, throwing the blanket around both of there shoulders and kneeling behind him. She put her chin on his shoulder and kissed his cheek.

"Do you mind if I see them?" She asked "I've been curious. I didn't even know that you could draw until this trip."

"I used to do it for a living." He said.

"Really? How did you have time, being Captain America and all?"

"That's the thing. There really wasn't time." Steve said sadly, still missing those days sometimes.

"You don't mind if I look at them, do you?" She asked again, and he finally raised the drawing pad for her inspection.

"Oh my god." Rachel said as she looked at a familiar, yet totally new face "That's Peggy, isn't it? Peggy Carter?"

"Yes."

"But she looks so young! So beautiful!" Rachel marveled.

"That is how she looked when I knew her during the war." Steve admitted "Yes. She was very beautiful."

"But you were drawing her with your eyes closed."

"I hoped that you wouldn't notice that." Steve said.

"Why not?"

"I don't know. Maybe because it is a secret." Steve said "I could never do it when I was a boy. Only after."

"After what?"

"After the serum." Cap almost whispered "Maybe you are the only one who can understand that."

"Not really." Rachel said.

"Close your eyes." Steve said "Think about someone… someone that you haven't seen in years. Someone that you loved very much."

"Are you trying to hypnotize me?"

"Just try."

Rachel closed her eyes and did as he asked. She thought of her mother, who had left her so very long ago, and was suddenly bowled over by the image of her face. She could actually see it more sharply in her mind than when she was just remembering her. Every detail and feature of her face. Rachel realized that before she had been injected with the serum the woman's face had blurred over the years until it was almost a cartoon of its former self in her mind, but there it was… smiling and full of love.

"Oh God!" Rachel said, her eyes snapping open. She had never tried that before, or even thought of trying it.

"I thought so." Steve said.

"Did you do that?" Rachael asked.

"No. Your own mind did. The serum improves every part of you. Every cell in your body, including your brain cells. You may never forget another thing as long as you live… even if you want to." Steve said.

She began flipping through the other sketches, seeing unfamiliar faces that she would probably never forget. After all, Steve had not forgot them.

"Who is this?" Rachel asked, pointing out a handsome man with a hawk-like nose and sideburns that didn't quit.

"That is Lord Falsworth. They called him Union Jack back then."

She turned another page to a beautiful blonde with a smile that carried mischief.

"That is his sister, Jackie. She went by Spitfire."

Another page had a happy couple pressing their faces together.

"Bob Frank and his lovely bride. They were The Whizzer and Miss America."

"You can see them all, just like this, like it was almost yesterday?" Rachel asked.

"Sometimes it seems like it was almost yesterday."

"I never read much about the war. I was hardly ever in school anyway. Tell me about it, Steve. I love the way that you tell it, even though sometimes it can be so sad." Rachel said, wrapping her arms around him.

"The more I tell, the harder it is." He admitted but he knew that it was almost over. He knew that all stories had to come to an end sometime.

"I understand." Rachel assured him.

"They were my best friends…" Steve began.

* * *

June 1944

Some say that hope springs eternal, but hope has to spring from somewhere. After the despair of 1942 and the struggle of 1943 it had all come to this. After a hard six months spent smashing the Nazis against the Alps in Italy they had finally gotten the word. Rome had fallen, and American soldiers were leading the charge behind Patton's tanks. As Cap looked at the telegram he smiled and brought it out into the foggy England night. The ancient manor house still showed some bomb damage from the Blitz, but the Falsworths had insisted that it had stood through so much more. If the castle could stand against Welsh, Vikings, Celts, Scots, and worst of all the French there was nothing to fear from a German bomb or two. They truly believed that they had the invulnerability of history on their side, and Steve found that extraordinary.

Lord Falsworth himself was standing on his rampart overlooking the Thames with one foot up and thoughtfully puffing away at a pipe. He reminded Steve of Alan Quatermain overlooking a lost city of gold or King Solomon's mines in an old action story. He was dressed in his Union Jack costume except for his mask, and Steve removed his own as he walked to stand by the man. He breathed out a sigh of relief at the words he was about to tell the older man.

"Rome fell, didn't it?" Lord Falsworth cut him off.

"Well… yes. How did you know?"

"It was only a matter of time." Falsworth said, puffing out smoke. "The Fritz couldn't hang on much longer, not with everything else that's going on. Good news, that."

"I guess that means that it is time for us." Cap said.

"Tomorrow, they say, although they have said that before. Everything depends on the weather, it seems."

"What's the plan?" Steve asked.

"Namor is going to clear the mines with his Atlantean volunteers. After that he will do as he pleases and we all know it. The Torch and Toro are to go in with the Airborne contingent and fight behind the lines. I'm going ashore with the Scots. Jackie wants to go ashore with her Majesty's troops and is spitting mad that I won't let her. Blazing Skull is bulletproof, and that bit of business has his name written all over it. Robert is going ashore at Utah, and that leaves you and the young Buck with a pleasant piece of real estate named Omaha. Good hunting."

Cap nodded his head. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

Most of the qualities of leadership that people admired in Captain America were ones that he learned from Union Jack. Although Falsworth was inspired to don the English flag in response to his American counterpart, he had long been an adventurer before long johns came into fashion. They had spent many of these tense, waiting nights in May sitting by the fireplace and talking about their adventures. The older Englishman was full of bawdy stories of the bedroom variety, but also of some very astonishing tales. Fighting poachers in the African Veldt, hunting rebels in India, defending remote outposts in the far east from the Japanese using native troops. He had been fighting this war since 1940, saying to hell with the British government at times. He had used his own fortune for funding and had battled fascism every step of the way since Poland. He had admitted to Cap in private moments that he was weary of war, but had vowed that he would not stop until Hitler was six feet under.

"You Yanks are a brave lot." Falsworth said "I'm glad that you are on our side. You have all traveled a pretty long way just for a donnybrook. Must be all the British blood in your veins. I for one have come to think of you all as my cousins."

Steve smiled "That is the closest to a complement I have ever heard from you, Jack."

"Don't get too used to it. It is surely just the impending doom of this depressing situation that is making me so weepy."

"Goodnight, then, Lord Falsworth." Cap said with the open-handed salute that the Brits favored.

Cap turned away to walk back to the wing of the manor where he was staying, when Falsworth's voice chimed from behind him.

"If it wouldn't be a terrible bother, could you go speak with Jackie? As I have said, she is devastated by the news and I am not her favorite person right now. You are the only one that she listens to, and she refuses to leave her chambers."

Cap turned with an arched eyebrow "Isn't it improper to enter a proper English lady's chambers at this time of night unescorted?"

"With a Lord's permission, all things are proper don't you think?" Falsworth said, blowing smoke rings from his pipe.

* * *

Cap knocked on the door and breathed in nervously. He knew that Jacqueline Falsworth had a crush on him and that she would probably get the wrong idea about this. He had promised her brother, though, and he would do his best.

When she slowly opened the door and peeked out it looked like she had been crying. Her wet, red eyes brightened with joy when she saw the form that was in her chamber door.

"Steven!" She said, the name that she preferred for him. He supposed that it made him sound like a character in one of her Bronte novels.

"Is this a bad time, Jackie?" Cap asked.

"I don't know." She said "I guess it is, but it is fabulous to see you. Why are you here?"

"I just wanted to talk to you about... Important things."

"Just give me a second." She said, then returned in literally a second fully clothed. It was unsettling to see her superhuman speed at work. What was even more unsettling was the fact that she was slower than Robert Frank. Even though that was something only the two of them seemed to be able to tell.

Cap nervously walked into her chambers, looking at the beautiful teenage girl beaming at him. He wondered how he kept getting himself into these situations. He saw a pair of cushy chairs by her fireplace with a tea service between.

"Maybe we should sit down." Cap insisted.

Once seated she seemed to not be beaming anymore. Maybe something in his manner projected that this was to be an adult moment not of the romantic sort that she had imagined.

"Jackie… your brother is worried about you." Cap began.

"He doesn't know anything!" She raged "He's just… so old fashioned and pig headed!"

"Calm down, Jackie." Steve said "I'm not here to defend him or to attack you. I am just here to tell you why things are the way that they are."

"I can fight." Jackie said "I can fight just as well as the rest of you. My brother doesn't even have any powers and he is going!"

"Jackie, you are a 16 year old girl with your entire life ahead of you…"

"But Bucky just turned 17!" Jackie protested. "It isn't fair at all."

"If I tell you something… something personal… will you believe me?" Cap asked.

"What is that?" Jackie asked.

"Will you believe me?" Steve repeated.

"Of course. You have never lied to me."

"Hear me out, then. I don't want you to go. That's true, but I don't want your brother to go either. I don't want Bucky to go, I don't want Bob and Maddy to go. I don't want to go." Cap finally admitted.

"What?" Jackie was shocked "You? No!"

"Do you think that makes me a coward?" Cap asked.

"No… I mean… I don't know."

"Namor and the Torch have little or nothing to fear from the bullets and bombs… but the rest of us are only human. You don't understand how it is. You've helped us fight crime, fight nazis and spies, but you don't know how it is like on the battlefields of the war. The men… the boys… are dying all around you and there isn't anything that you can do about it. You are powerless to stop it. I… tried… at the Philippines, Africa, Italy… it was all the same. Death everywhere." Steve was fighting his memories, fighting his experiences, even as he spoke.

"My God."

"I don't want you to have to see that, Jackie." Steve said, his voice breaking. "I want you to stay the way that you are. I have lost everyone, don't you understand? My mother, father, brother, and my love. Here… I finally feel like I have a family again. I love you. I love all of you and I don't want any of you to die tomorrow. If I have to die in your place, so be it, but I do not want to lose any of you."

He fought his tears, but he looked back and she had tears streaming down her face. Her chest was heaving with sobs. "I never knew, Steven." Jackie said "I never knew that you cared so much."

She threw her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek. Her tears were wet on his face. It was an uncomfortable moment, but it passed. He knew that he was telling the truth, and she believed him. He could only hope that she would understand.

"I won't go, then." Jackie said "There are other ways to help Her Majesty back here on the island. I will just have to wait another day to see France."

"I'll bring you with us when we reach Paris." Cap said with a smile "You have my word on that, Lady Falsworth."

When Cap emerged from the chambers and turned the nearby corner a small gang was awaiting him. Bucky and Toro were there. The two teen sidekicks had become fast friends and were nearly inseparable. The Human Torch and Namor were there also. They were all smiling from ear to ear. Seeing Namor smile was a rare enough occurrence that he knew that something was up.

"Hello everyone." Steve said.

"A nice night for cradle robbing, isn't it Cap?" The Torch said with a mock yawn.

"Torch…" Cap started to explain.

"Oh, no Firebug." Namor interrupted "Do waste time with double entendres! Simply ask the Captain how it feels to be caught with his hands in a Lady's knickers."

"Namor…" He turned to the Atlantean prince.

"You old DOG you!" Bucky said with a laugh.

"How was she? I mean… had she ever done it before?" Toro asked before the Torch whacked him on the back of the head.

"All of you cut it out!" Cap's booming voice reverberated through the ancient halls of Falsworth manor. He stood their shamefacedly as the _out…out…out…_ echoed away.

"Whoa!" Bucky said, taking a step back.

"Nothing happened." He added more quietly.

Torch and Namor looked at each other with what looked like disappointment. Bucky and Toro just looked confused.

A nearby door popped open. Bob and Madaline stuck their heads out of the door, looking almost embarrassed.

"Is everything all right out here?" Mary asked.

"Are you all ok?" Bob added.

It was obvious that the Whizzer and Miss America had been engaging in a little knicker-raiding of their own over in that room. It was on their faces as clear as day. Toro started chuckling and the Torch hit him again.

"There's no emergency if that's what you mean." Namor laughed "Carry on."

The door slammed shut.

"When are they ever going to get married?" Torch asked.

"Why bother when living in sin is so much fun?" Namor shrugged.

"I think that we should mind our own business." Cap said, letting it be clear exactly who he was talking about.

"Cap, I've got to ask you something." Bucky asked as they were heading back to their own rooms.

"What is that, Buck?"

"Why didn't you… you know… with Jackie?"

"I would have thought that you would be happy about that, Buck. I thought that you had your eye on her."

"I am… really… but why didn't you? You had the chance and I'm sure that she wanted you to. You like her too, so why not?" Bucky seemed genuinely confused.

"As you grow older you'll understand. I'm not all that much older that Jackie, but the years that are between her and I were… really hard years. She deserves better. She deserves to discover things herself with a boy her own age. A boy like you, Buck." Steve said as he elbowed him.

"I can't tell her that I like her that way. I guess that I'm just too shy." Buck admitted.

"You'll get over that." Cap said "Like I said, age and maturity can work wonders. You haven't had much of a chance just to be a kid, running around and fighting all these battles with me…"

"Aw, shoot. I wouldn't have missed it for the world, Cap. You know that."

"Yes." Cap said "I guess that I do."

Cap and Bucky went to their rooms, and Cap settled down immediately into a deep sleep. He dreamt of an English cliff with high waves. He was standing out on the water, bobbing ankle deep on the waves. Standing on the cliff was a beautiful girl with brown curls and green eyes that looked through him. As the mists of the water sprayed her she smiled. It was a sad smile. A tired smile, but a smile that told him that she was waiting. A smile that told him that she would always wait, as long as it took. But when he walked across the waves and almost into her arms she became translucent, and then disappeared like a mirage when he touched her. He cried bitter tears in his dream, and when he looked down to his hands he saw that the tears were blood.

Across the hall, James Buchanan Barnes tossed and turned. He had spent all night thinking about what Cap had said to him. Steve was right. The time to be shy had passed long ago. He could die tomorrow. They could all die tomorrow, and if they did how would he ever know? If it was doing to happen, it was going to be tonight. He would have to just go and knock on that door just the same as Cap had. But once he got inside he wasn't going to chicken out. He was going to go through with it. Then he finally wouldn't be a boy anymore. He would walk into battle tomorrow as a man. He jumped out of bed and walked through the halls of Falsworth Mansion. After a moment standing in front of the chamber door, he finally got the courage to knock on it just as strongly as Cap had.

* * *

Cap landed on Omaha beach with the first wave of men; the Rangers and the Engineers. He and Bucky were wearing regular Army uniforms except for their masks, so that they would not make compelling targets from the machine gun batteries as they cleared the boat and flopped down on the beach. Once there all hell broke loose. Everybody was pinned down, nobody was moving, and then one of the flamethrowers exploded. Men were engulfed in flames everywhere and Cap ripped off his fatigues to try and smother the flames. The sound of bullets whipping through flesh was constant, like a band saw, and he was splattered on all sides by the blood of the men he had come with. The very best, the very brightest, and the very bravest that the Army had to offer were chewed up by bullets that came with the rapidity of a rainstorm. Nobody knew what to do. Officers were laying with their heads in the mud and maps clenched in their hands. NCOs were yelling and them for answers. As the first wave bogged down he had Bucky man an automatic rifle and stood up, his shield held high to deflect the shower of bullets that descended on him.

"C'mon, men!" He screamed, just as he had at Guadalcanal "Lets get the hell off of this beach!"

He charged forward, hoping that they didn't follow him. If they followed him they would die, but if they stayed they would die eventually. There was no choice but to press forward. He knew that, but it was hard to except any time in life that you had no choice. He bit down and charged into the bullets. He saw a man's head explode like a grapefruit with a firecracker in it. He saw a man step on a land mine meant for a tank and turn into pink mist. He saw another with both of his legs blown off trying to claw his way up the beach with his arms. A mortar hit and back flipped a soldier 20 feet in the air, impaling him on a caltrop wrapped with barbed wire. When he was close enough to see the Germans in their machine gun towers he heard the roar of men all around him. So many more than he thought would make it. So many more had made it because so many of the Germans had been firing at his shield. Trying to destroy the indestructible. Cap's bellow of rage joined theirs as they charged up the beach, and in a matter of hours all of the slaughter would be over.

One way or the other.

* * *

At the end, Captain America was not at the top of the bluff with the men who had lived. He left Bucky up there. He had seen the young man light a cigarette and start joking with the other men, all so very glad to be alive. Cap did not feel like that at all. He was down here with the dead, where he belonged. They rolled and washed in the waves like discarded toys, as the Rangers had not yet assigned a corpse detail. They covered the entire beach, and the water was still red with their blood. Cap looked over all of it with stunned, dead eyes and a mouth so dry It felt like he was still in North Africa. The smell of the spent battlefield was like smoke, scorched metal, burnt meat, piss, shit, and the rangy smell of the sea hiding in back like an embarrassed visitor. He had seen so many battlefields before, after the battle was done, and they were all like this. They made him think of that quote attributed to the officer that discovered the massacre at little big horn.

"How white they are." Steve muttered, looking at the remains of the finest men he had ever knew washing up on shore like the dead fish beside them.

He had been wounded three times, but refused medical attention. He couldn't show them any weakness because they needed him. So he bled quietly. If he was not a super soldier, he would not be standing, but rather laying among the Rangers.

"Get up…" he heard a pitiable voice saying. "Get up, guys! Lets get going! Don't… don't just lay there. Get up. Rangers don't just lay down… we're the best… get up guys…"

He saw the dazed soldier walking through the corpses, checking them all and yelling at them in a broken, sobbing voice. He was a pitible figure, soaked in blood and pale as a sheet. He quivered and his voice quavered. He looked barely fit to stand but was still yelling at the top of his lungs.

"Those are Nazis up there… lets go get em! Lets show those Krauts! C'mon guys… Get up! GET UP! DON'T JUST LAY THERE!"

Captain America turned to the soldier, tears in his eyes.

"You tell them Cap…" The soldier begged "You tell them to get up! They'll listen to you! Please… they need… to get up…"

Cap wrapped his arms around the Ranger, and the man cried on his shoulder. He cried on the Ranger's shoulder and they both fell to their knees in the surf. His shield lay discarded nearby, waves washing over it.

* * *

"Oh my God." Rachel said "I had no idea."

They were laying on the bed again, Rachel having dropped his sketchbook somewhere around the beginning of Omaha beach.

"It's hard." Steve said, wiping his nose "It is a hard story to tell. We all cared about each other so much. It was the way that you could only care about someone when you depended so much on each other. The operation that they called Overlord was a big step, but there was still so much farther to go. It wasn't the end. It was just the beginning of the end."

"When I first met you I had heard some of the stories, but I didn't really believe them. You looked way too young to have fought a war in the forties. I just thought that you were another guy wearing the same costume."

Cap was silent about that. That was a story for another time.

"The weeks that we've spent together have taught me something." Rachel said.

"What is that?" Steve asked.

"That I've been letting myself give up too easily. Most of the mistakes in my life could have been avoided if I had just kept trying at the hard right instead of the easy wrong. In everything that you do, everything you say, you try to spread that message to people. I guess that I always wanted to listen, but never really did. I'm listening now, Steve, and I love you for that."

She kissed him again. They only had a few hours before dawn, but they knew exactly how they were going to spend it.

* * *

The next day the three of them arrived at the international flight gate of Tony Stark's private airstrip in Seattle/Tacoma Airport.

"Whoa, what a flight." Falcon said, cracking his back he was still a little stiff from the beat down he had taken at the hands of the security guards, and hoped that he didn't have another one coming just for being back.

"It sure beats coach." Rachel said.

"From here it should be easy to recover your identification, Sam." Steve insisted "Then we can get a flight to New York and start investigating…"

Just then, the crowd of aid workers were shoved aside by about a dozen agents of SHIELD flanking Jim Rhodes. A very unhappy looking Jim Rhodes.

"I'm sorry about this." Jim said sincerely "I didn't want it to go down like this. You didn't give me much choice once you brought SHIELD down on me, Wilson. By the way… here's your wallet."

Sam caught the wallet that was thrown at him and scowled.

"You called them, Sam?" Cap asked in shock.

"No… Rachel said. "I did. I wanted to arrange to turn myself in."

"To SHIELD?" Cap whipped his head to her in surprise.

"No." A voice came from behind the agents. "To me."

The familiar face of Detective Sanchez stepped forward.

"I'm sorry Steve. I didn't tell you the entire truth. I wasn't discharged from the hospital. I escaped from it. I told you that you had convinced me to do the right thing, but I didn't mean for this…"

"Save it, lady." Sanchez said as he handcuffed her "I'm placing you under arrest for the murder of Alexander Gentry, also known as the Porcupine. You have the right to remain silent, anything that you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney one will be provided for you. Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?"

"Yes." Rachel said miserably.

"You get your hands off her…" Steve said when he saw how roughly the detective was handling her.

"Are you doing to interfere with my arrest? I got plenty of obstruction of justice charges for everybody!" Sanchez howled "You super creeps are all alike. You think that you're above the law, well, let me tell you something! You ain't!"

Cap's jaw set into a hard line, but he knew that the man was right.

"I'm sorry, Steve. All I wanted was my freedom, but you've taught me what freedom really is… what it really means."

"Let's go." Sanchez grumbled.

Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson were circled by the SHIELD agents as Rachel was led away. Cap looked at her disappear from his life, miserable and helpless. He could have stopped him. He could have stopped them all, SHIELD Agents or not. As Rachel disappeared into the elevator he felt like he wanted to break every bone in their bodies.

"Calm down, Captain." One of the SHIELD agents said with as much calm as he obviously wanted Cap to feel "We were instructed to assist in the arrest, but we are not here to antagonize you. We are only here to _invite _you to speak with Colonel Fury. He has information that you will find indispensable."

"Yes… Invited. I see. Nick does always dangle information when it suits him, doesn't he?" Cap said, inches from rage "You tell _Colonel _Fury that he can take his invitation and shove it…"

"Steve! Maybe we should just hear him out." Sam said with little certainty "These guys are just doing their jobs."

Cap stood there, doing his best not to quake with his Fury. Didn't anybody else but him understand what had just happened? Didn't anybody else see what he had just lost? He needed time to think, and maybe that is what his talk with Fury would give him.

"Take me to Nick." The Super Soldier told the fearful agent "I think that its high time we talked some things over."

* * *

The Crimson Cowl looked over his troops.

Hyperion looked angry as hell. That was good. The creature was blessed with almost limitless physical power, and yet he had a soft spot on the inside that was impossible to deny. His anger would fuel his power into a furious rage. He would be more effective that way. Power Princess looked positively thrilled, and that was also good. She was prone to being too disinterested in what they were doing to be effective at times. Amphibian had a look of resolve, and that was also good. Golden Archer was sharpening his arrowheads with a bloodthirsty smile on his face. The prospect of killing was enough to motivate him. Speed Demon had recently taken another hit of Meth, so if he was not motivated he could at least fake it. Spectrum had refrained from getting drunk, which could only help his focus. Black Eagle was self motivated. He never needed to worry about him.

He walked up and put his arm around Moonglow, their newest recruit, and whispered into her ear.

"I know that this is a difficult coming out party for you, but no one will ever know your identity. Do you know what you have to do?"

"Yes." Jennifer Kale said "I don't feel bad about it either. They are just a bunch of fascists anyway. They're been running things and ruining people's lives for too long."

"That's my girl." He said, turning to the assembled Syndicate.

"There will never be a better time than now for this!" The Cowl said "We are going to hit them hard and fast. They will not even know what hit them until they hit the ground! By this time tomorrow, every newspaper in America will be running the same story! The SHIELD Hellicarrier will be a thing of the past, and soon Captain America will follow!"

_**Next: Battlefields**_

_**What will be the final fate of Diamondback? What is Nick Fury's agenda? What will our beleaguered hero do when the assembled Sinister Syndicate lays waste to the Shield Helicarrier? Tune in Next week, true believers!**_


	16. Battlefields

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Chapter Fourteen: Battlefields**

So this is how we come to the crux of everything.

We have all been following this story with some interest. We seem to think that we have an idea of what is going on. I am Uatu, the watcher, and even I am enthralled. As I am capable of seeing all of the pertinent events, I can shift our gaze at will. As I watch Rachel Leighton is handcuffed to an NYPD officer who is flying her back to New York to face murder charges. Captain America and the Falcon are escorted by SHIELD agents to the famous Helicarrier, where Nick Fury awaits. Bernie Rosenthal is berating a legal assistant for losing an important file. Matt Murdock lays in bed, sleeping off the bruises of another brutal night in Hell's Kitchen. The Scarlet Witch tears through the Danger Room at level ten, her power flowing around her in devastating tendrils, as the assembled X-men truly understand for the first time that she is the daughter of Magneto. The Wasp walks up to a fateful door and makes a fateful knock. Tony Stark rages at Jim Rhodes over the phone regarding the events at the Seattle/Tacoma Airport. The would-be heroine known as Songbird and the man known as Hawkeye search for the other members of the Thunderbolts, their sanctuary of Avengers mansion gone from them forever. Doctor Henry Pym puts the last of his heroic costumes in a cardboard box and seals it with duct tape. He locks the box in the attic, and returns to his lab. He has an idea for a new patent, and it will require a lot of work.

As I can see the good I can also see the evil. In a secret headquarters the Red Skull fumes. He knows that his greatest enemy is being put through a terrible trial, and it is maddening to his ego that he is not involved. He cannot believe that anyone but him could be the agent of his enemy's destruction. Doctor Victor Von Doom drinks a glass of wine in his castle and contemplates the headlines in the stack of newspapers that he has regarded. He finds it disgraceful how the Captain has been treated, having always found him a worthy adversary… if not an equal. Through the air, in an intimidating formation, the Sinister Syndicate flies. Power Princess, Hyperion, Dr Spectrum, Black Eagle, and Moonglow fly under their own power. Golden Archer, Speed Demon, and Amphibian fly with the aid of a jetpack that we find strangely familiar. Peter Henry Gyrich throws darts at a photograph of Captain America, glumly regarding the latest poll numbers. Somewhere in the darkness, the man that wears the Crimson Cowl smiles in anticipation of his triumph.

I can see this all, but I am as helpless as you to effect the outcome. Despite the power at my fingertips my oath prevents me from interfering in these events. So I can only watch as Wendell Vaughn stands mere meters away from my blue area, looking down on the earth while contemplating his earthly responsibilities and his cosmic ones. One word from me to him could change everything. Perhaps even appearing to him would warn him of the importance of the upcoming events and spur him into action. Yet that I cannot do, for once you violate an oath in small ways it becomes all too easy to violate it in large ones. That is something that Captain America would understand, I know. So as I look down once again on the man who's long life I have followed with interest, I fervently hope that he can once again overcome the impossible odds that he is about to face.

I can only watch.

* * *

Captain America and the Falcon stepped onto the deck of the Hellicarrier in full uniform. The SHIELD agents had even given Sam the opportunity to retrieve his luggage from the lost and found of the hotel where the had left them. Redwing happily flapped her wings on his arm, beaming directly to his thoughts the excitement of being so high in the sky. It was funny the things that could thrill animals, yet so many things that they did not care about. Now it was time to face the music. Nick Fury waited in his office behind a solid steel blast-shield of a door. Cap's jaw was still set in a hard line, as if he had broken his jaw and had it wired shut. Falcon was a little more apprehensive of Fury's reaction to Sam's broad interpretation of the mission he had been given. He had told him to go talk to Bernie, but ever since then he had pretty much been writing his own orders. Cap was still angry about Rachel. Sam could almost feel the anger coming from the man like waves of heat. This wasn't going to be pretty.

As the door slid open Fury stood behind his desk with his arms crossed across his chest. As always, he looked ready to gird up his loins for battle. Cap's features showed an identical bellicosity, and as two intense blue eyes stared hard into one dark brown one Falcon found himself holding his breath. The door closed behind them and silence reigned as the staring contest continued. The air smelled faintly of Jack Daniels and heavily of cheap cigar smoke. Redwing let out a confused little squawk and Falcon cleared his throat. He opened his mouth as if to say something but almost felt if he said a word it would be speaking out of turn. Anything had to be better than this, though. It reminded him of the moment before Jim Rhodes sucker punched him and the situation got really out of hand.

"How're you holding up, soldier?" Nick Fury finally asked.

"Hello Nick." Cap said without any warmth, perhaps answering the question by not answering the question.

"It's pretty rough business that went down at the airport, but I'm sure you understand that SHIELD's a law enforcement body that needs to cooperate with other agencies…"

"When it suits you." Cap cut him off.

"What the Sam Hill does that mean?" Fury fired back.

"You forget who you're talking to Nick." Steve said "I know exactly what you will do, exactly how far you will go, to accomplish your objectives."

"Are you still on your high horse, Steve? Even after all that we've been through?"

"Don't you mean everything that you've put me through?"

"If you're still hacked off about the Carter thing…"

"Which time would you be talking about?"

Falcon quietly backed into a corner.

"Steve, if I didn't know you better I'd think that you're _trying_ to piss me off." Fury said as politely as he ever got.

"I guess that you don't know me as well as you think." Cap fired back "I just don't want to think that you can waste my time listening to more of your lies."

"Lies? What the hell do you think you know about lies! I was fighting the cold war while you were taking a long winter's nap! You wake up looking and feeling like Joe College and think that you have all the answers when you don't even have a clue!"

"Why don't you give me one then, Nick! I'd love to hear that!"

"You want the truth, then?" Fury raged.

"It would be preferable to more lies!"

"You can't handle the truth Steve! You don't want to hear what I have to deal with everyday! You don't want to hear that this country has more screws loose than a '74 Pinto! You don't want to hear that being the greatest nation in a world like this is like graduating with honors from summer school! You don't want to hear that you are a relic of a time that nobody wants to remember!" Fury's diatribe reached epic volume, but Captain America didn't even blink. Fury stormed over to the window of his office, overlooking an aerial view of New York City.

"Are you finished?" Cap asked flatly.

"Not by a country yard! You see the people outside this window? They're sheep, and sheep get slaughtered! It is my job to protect them, and some days it seems that I fail more than I succeed. The Government spends more of the taxpayers' money on political advertisements than they do on SHIELD's entire budget and they want me to work miracles! The entire world hates our guts! Everybody wants a piece of us and they want it yesterday! Meanwhile the politicians keep on playing their games and thinking happy thoughts while they tell me to make it all better! Let me tell you something, Steve! You are right about one thing… I will do whatever I have to do. I will lie, cheat, steal, and murder to keep those people down there feel safe in their beds tonight! I've spent years trying to protect you from the short-sighted bastards that would use you for their own purposes and throw you away when you don't fit the bill anymore. Just like they did in 1945!"

"I'm tired of listening to you, Nick! I'm tired of you rationalizing your every action and ignoring the oaths that you took! You are the one that uses people, Nick! You are the one that throws them away when they aren't of any use to you anymore!" Steve raged.

"You know what I'm tired of, boy scout? I'm tired of you acting like there isn't any blood on your hands! You and I both know that you wear red gloves for a reason! You aren't making my job any easier when you oppose the administration and embarrass the entire federal government! Gyrich and the commission want your balls in a pickle jar and I'm the only one keeping them off your ass!"

"If you are fishing for gratitude you picked the wrong pond." Cap said.

"Steve… you just need to hear me out. We go back a long way. There was a time that we faced the elephant together, but that time has passed. I'm not a Buck Sergeant anymore and you aren't a dumb kid with some bars on your collar. The reality of the world today is that there is no truth anymore. All that you can do is pick the lie that you like and stick to it. You know as well as I do that it was always that way… we just were too stuck on stupid to figure it out."

"What do you want from me, Nick?" Steve said softly.

"I want you to work for me again. You and Falcon were the best team I ever had. You work for me and you will have no worries. As far as the government is concerned, you will be untouchable. You can work with me… help me fix this damn mess of a world."

"I can't do that, Nick." Steve said.

"Why the hell not?" Fury roared.

"I've spent too much time since I woke up letting other people define who I am. At first it was the Avengers. Then it was you. I've never spent enough time on my own to figure out who is under this mask. I need that time, Nick. I need to fight the battles on my own. How can I tell the country who I am when I don't even know who I am?" Steve admitted this all with a tone of sincerity and honesty that blunted Fury's rage.

"Soldier… sometimes it seems to me that you are the only one who doesn't know that. I know the guy who is under your mask. He is still a little young, raw, and stupid, but he's also the best that I've ever known." Fury said with a voice like gravel. "You haven't changed a bit since Bastogne."

"You have." Cap replied, sounding disappointed.

"I'll tell you what, Steve. You don't have to make your decision right away. You take a walk around the Helicarrier. You sleep on it if you have to, because we've got some quarters ready for you. Talk to your friend here. I'm sure that they two of you can weigh the pros and cons."

"I'll give it some thought, but I can't promise that my answer will be any different." Cap said as he looked out the window and considered what Fury had said about the people he was looking down on.

"That's all I ask." Fury nodded, his one eyed stare regarding him.

"Is that all, then." Cap asked.

"I've got a few things to iron out with Sam here, but other than that you're dismissed." Fury said, somehow feeling that it should have been the other way around.

Cap walked out of the office without another word.

Falcon fidgeted uncomfortably, standing on the little carpet in front of Fury's desk.

"Yeah… we have some things to iron out." Fury growled as he stared at Falcon. "Too bad I don't have my tire iron."

* * *

There are some surprises in life that are no real surprise at all. Captain America faced one of those moments as he walked out of Nick Fury's office and came face to face with Sharon Carter. She was, after all, a SHIELD agent. She had recently been sent on a deep cover assignment that put the brakes on their relationship, but nothing lasts forever. It was perfectly reasonable that she would be here, but he didn't believe for a moment that it was a coincidence. She had a look on her face that was so sour that it could have curdled milk. She clutched a rolled-up newspaper in her hand. She looked like a housewife ready to spank a naughty puppy.

"Hello Steve." She said icily.

"Sharon." He said with a nod.

"It is a pleasure to see you again." She said in a tone that inferred it was anything but.

"I'm afraid that the pleasure is all mine." Cap said wryly.

"We've been through a lot, so lets cut through the crap." Sharon said "I've been in deep cover, but I haven't been dead. I've been keeping an eye on you and let me tell you that I've not been happy with what I've seen."

"Why don't we take a walk and discuss it?" Cap offered, gesturing to the gaggle of agents that had gathered to witness this confrontation. A few of them whispered to each other behind their hands.

"Why not just discuss it here? After all, it seems like you love an audience, don't you Steve?" Carter said through her scowl.

"It just seems to me that this is something better discussed privately."

"It seems to me that you have no idea what the hell is private anymore!" Sharon finally exploded, causing one of the nearby agents to snort laughter.

"Sharon…"

"Don't you Sharon me! I thought that we had an understanding when we talked the last time, but every time I turn around it is something different! First I found out about you and my sister. It was hard to deal with, but I got over it because ithappened before I was born. Then it was your ex the lawyer, and I sucked it up because you thought I was dead. Then it was that cold blooded snake bitch! Now its this! What the hell are you thinking? Do you have any idea how much you've humiliated me?" Sharon seemed to be reigning in tears of fury.

"I don't have any idea what you are talking about, Sharon. We parted as friends and you have no right…"

"It doesn't matter how we left it you insensitive clod!" Sharon sniffled "It doesn't make it hurt any less. I thought that you felt the same way about me that I felt about you."

"How exactly is that, Sharon? You never did get around to telling me."

"Go to hell, Rogers! Just go to hell!" Sharon snarled, throwing her newspaper into his face and storming away "Go to hell and take all your whores with you!"

Steve was to stunned to go after her, because the paper that she had thrown landed so that he could see the headline that so upset her.

_Scarlet Witch admits affair with Captain America._

Underneath were several pictures of him with Wanda. One was when she was first joining the team and he had one hand on her shoulder. Another was taken shortly after the Kree/Skrull war and they were both smiling. The third was the two of them framed in a white house window looking in different directions shortly after the vote that tore the Avengers apart. The Cameraman that captured that one must have been a real daredevil. Steve picked up the paper and crumpled it in his hand. He saw the innocuous quote from Wanda that they had twisted beyond belief and the anger swelled up in him. She had not admitted an affair, only her honest feelings, and the words made his heart skip a beat.

Sharon Carter fled from the man who had, at one time, meant the world to her. When they first met and got involved it all seemed like a Disney version of a fairy tale. Over time, it had become the Grimm version of the Fairy tale. Finally it seemed to her to be a Greek tragedy and she could not stand it anymore. She felt the tears stinging her eyes and refused to look any of the other agents in the eye as she rushed past. Sharon Carter was an iron hard bitch, right? She didn't have any feelings, did she? She hated them all at that moment. She refused to look back over her shoulder at the man who had hurt her so much, and promised herself that no man would ever hurt her like that again.

* * *

The sound that the Syndicate made on their final approach was the sound of inevitability.

Hyperion and Power Princess just made the sound of whishing air as they flew, but Dr. Spectrum emitted a low hum. Black Eagle's wings made a stronger swishing noise. The enchanted broomstick that Moonglow was riding side-saddle tinkled with the sound of little bells. The three jet packs that carried the non flying members were quiet by the standards of such machines, but were by far the loudest methods of propulsion. Together they flew like missiles at the SHIELD hellicarrier, and thanks to the tiny jamming devices on each of their wrists they were undetectable. Hyperion smiled as they made that final approach, bracing himself for the impact to come, because he was filled with rage and needed the means to release it. As the hellicarrier rushed toward him, he extended his fists and accelerated to his full speed. He broke the sound barrier right before he broke through the bulkhead.

Almost everyone around Captain America was thrown to the ground as the gigantic airborne carrier lurched, but he kept his balance. Even as Hyperion tore through a vast section of the engine room, residential facilities, training area, firing range, and out the other side of the structure Captain America kept his feet and scanned in every direction for approaching threats. He had been pulled out of his stunned pondering of Wanda by the attack on the carrier, and would not think about her again until much later. He heard the engines idle as emergency systems came into effect. Although it had been moving at a good clip, it was now all that the carrier could do to stay afloat. The door to Fury's office slid open as red lights illuminated and alarms sounded everywhere.

"What the hell was that!" Fury yelled into his communicator watch.

"Direct hit, sir! We took a direct hit to the starboard hull! Projectile unknown exited through the portside forecastle!" The female agent on the other side of the line screamed.

"Why don't you cut all that Navy talk and tell me that we have a big damn hole in the carrier?" Fury yelled.

"We have a big hole sir!" The unlucky agent responded.

"That cuts it! I'm gonna to kill somebody!" Fury howled as a shell shocked Falcon stumbled out of his office.

"Follow me, Nick!" Cap yelled as he rushed to where he had heard the impact.

"Follow you? Hell no! You follow me!" Fury yelled as he ran, legs pumping furiously to keep up with the Super Soldier.

Falcon took flight and followed both of them.

* * *

Sharon Carter had almost made it to her quarters when the alarm sounded, but then her quarters ceased to exist. She could only see a purple and gold streak tear through her billets and into another compartment before the explosive decompression hit. She grasped, scraped, and clawed to hold onto something. The drawback of the SHIELD headquarters, however, was that it had no door handles or other protruding objects. Her fingernails tore bloody streaks over steel as she was sucked out of the hole in the ceiling. She failed to grasp the edges of several other holes as she was pulled through them, cutting her hand on jagged metal in her desperate attempts. Finally she was torn from the pressurized cabin of the carrier and catapulted several hundred yards from the structure before gravity kicked in. A scream of absolute, disbelieving terror was torn from her lungs before she realized that she had just screamed out her last breath of breathable oxygen. She lost consciousness from a combination of terror, altitude, and lack of oxygen; swooning like a southern belle in a civil war movie. Like a rag doll she plunged toward her inevitable demise, and her last thought before the blackness settled upon her was Steve Rogers, smiling at her in the sun.

She still had nearly 30,000 feet to fall as Hyperion watched her plunge. His telescopic vision, sharper than an eagle's, took in every feature of her face as she fell. There was no pleasure on his face, but no compassion either. It was an expression devoid of humanity, yet seemed to be pondering a course of action. Until a few moments ago everything had seemed so clear to him. There was a target for his rage and the power in his veins begging him to destroy it. Yet, when he had heard her bloodcurdling scream something had changed. It was almost like it had triggered a half remembered instinct. A memory like the ones that haunted him in quiet moments. A half remembered sense of a man his mind told him he should be. He was not that man, though. It did not matter if he had made the decision or the decision had been made for him. The decision had been made, and this was who he was. He watched her fall, almost slow motion to his enhanced reflexes, and did not lift a hand to save her life. No matter what those distant memories insisted, that was not who he was.

_Just another dead bitch _Hyperion thought as he turned away _no big loss.

* * *

_

Captain America and The Falcon charged into battle, seeing countless SHIELD Agents being thrown around like rag dolls. They had gone directly to the hanger, seeing that it had sounded a red alert. They saw Power Princess plowing though them just as easily as she had plowed through the hanger door. Amphibian picked up two of them and slammed them together as Speed Demon rebounded around the hanger like a human missile. When Cap saw that it was the Syndicate his stomach turned to ice. They must have been insane to attack SHIELD. They had immense power, but SHIELD was not a bunch of amateurs. The rank and file SHIELD agents would not blink before using deadly force, and they had a stockpile of high tech weaponry that could easily make that possible. At the same time the Syndicate was powerful and deadly. It might very well take the lives of 50 SHIELD agents to cause one Syndicate casualty. There was one thing that Captain America realized at that moment: people were going to die and there was nothing that he could do about it.

As Cap and Falcon regarded this sight and Steve made this realization, many things were happening. That is the thing about battles and battlefields. Often times there is so much happening and so many people involved that even afterward it is impossible to determine what order the events actually happened in. What event caused another, or even who did what. The state of a battlefield is a state of confusion. In this case, on this day, confusion reigned supreme. Even years later, after several investigations and senate hearings the chain of events became difficult - if not impossible - to piece together. It is the best we can do to look at the jumble of events that contributed to the tragedy and draw our own conclusions.

A creature appeared in the SHIELD Gymnasium, and the few confused agents still there had their eyes bulge in surprise. It was a hulking mass of nigh-invulnerable flesh known as a Mindless One, and in its rage and confusion it did the only thing that it knew how to do. That was to destroy. Jennifer Kale knew that she could not control the Mindless One, which is why she opened the portal that summoned it as far away from her as she could imagine. She had been forbidden to enter the carrier, but had been encouraged to destroy as much of it as she could. She could not think of a better way to do it. The Mindless One plowed through wall after wall, swatting agents aside. It cared not for their lives or for their deaths, but those that attempted to use their useless firearms on it quickly found the beast squeezing the blood from their bodies with its impossibly strong paws.

Doctor Spectrum flew into the engine room and used his power gem to blast as much of the engineering equipment as he could to pieces. The room quickly became a chaos of flying shrapnel, spraying lubricant, and grinding metal. The Agents that had been working there tried to fight him, but their bullets were no use. The ricochets off of his force field even caused a few more casualties. Spectrum rampaged unabated, laughing like he was playing Frisbee at the park. This cunning attack had not been his idea. He didn't have ideas of his own, but he was good at following orders. The Boss said smash the engines, and he refused to fail him this time. He was too afraid of what would happen if he did. He formed the energy from his gem into a gigantic sledge hammer that he wouldn't have had a chance of wielding with his size and strength. One of the agents couldn't shake the thought that he looked like a Final Fantasy character as he proceeded to smash his way through the engineering wing.

Black Eagle flew from place to place, regarding the information in his palm pilot. He placed the explosive charges several of the stress points that had been isolated by the report in his palm pilot. Not for the first time, the deeply professional man named James Dore was struck with how thorough his employer was. He did not ask himself how his employer had come by this classified structural analysis, but simply executed his orders. His fingers worked with the dexterity of an ex-pilot, planting the charges where they would inflict maximum damage. There was no thought, no concern in his mind, for the people inside the carrier. It was a target, and targets got destroyed. James Dore was the kind of pilot who could drop napalm on a city block if somebody told him that it was the only way to win.

* * *

"Let's get them, Sam." Cap said as he charged Power Princess.

"You take the left, I'll take the right, meet you in the middle." Sam yelled back in their typical combat shorthand.

Cap threw his shield at Power Princess, catching it as he continued his charge after it rebounded off of her shield and suddenly he was airborne. A lurch of the carrier had pitched him and the Princess into the air, but his extraordinary balance and awareness enabled him to turn disadvantage into advantage as his gave her a brutal mid-air drop kick. The Inhuman warrior princess cartwheeled through a SHIELD air cruiser with a tremendous smashing noise, but popped up almost immediately with a strange smile on her face. It was as if the attack had been somewhat… fulfilling to her. Cap bashed her with his shield and she bashed him back with hers, sending him flying, but he caught himself with one hand and executed a perfect back handspring. They both fell into a perfect fighting stance and locked eyes. It was a look of mutual respect, but one that said that the battle must go on.

"Come on, darling… I've waited for you." Power Princess purred suggestively.

Falcon flew around Amphibian, kicking and punching the much stronger mutant with a flurry of moves that typified his airborne fighting style. Redwing fluttered by to distract the water breather, and Sam caught him right on the jaw with a kick that threw all 220 pounds of his weight into it. When that same lurch made Amphibian lose his balance Falcon was unaffected, and came down on Kingsley Rice's chest with both feet like Bruce Lee in a Kung Fu flick. He heard a rib break as he used his jet thrusters to put additional force into the blow, but still came down with a savage double axe handle to the face. He thought that the mutant was down for the count, but a brutal punch sent him flying across the hanger. Sam was still hurting from the beating he took in Seattle, and as he collided with the unyielding iron wall it was all that he could do to remain conscious. As he wobbled to his feet his enemy was still on one knee, spitting blood on the deck and crouching behind a spy plane that protected him from the fire of the ever-present agents.

"I hate this job." Falcon muttered.

Nick Fury opened fire with an assault rifle that he had taken off a fallen agent and shot fruitlessly at Speed Demon. Even though the super fast thug was not nearly as fast as the high-velocity rounds he was far faster than Fury's trigger finger could move. The bursts pockmarked every surface of the hanger as the other agents fell to the prone firing position and tried to pin down the Syndicate. That was before the carrier lurched like an elevator with a snapped cable and began to rapidly descend toward the New York skyline. Fury roared with half blind rage as he dropped his rifle and pulled forth a concussion grenade. He pulled the pin with his teeth and threw it at the melee, causing Steve's heart to jump as he leapt for cover and put his shield between himself and the grenade. The resulting explosion rocked the hanger and blew Power Princess and Amphibian out of the fight. Steve would not stir for several minutes, because the blast had erupted less than 5 feet from him and thrown him more than 20 feet.

Fury had no idea what that victory would end up costing him.

No one had noticed Golden Archer, because he had come in the garb of a SHIELD agent. He had pointed at the Syndicate in warning when people had given him or his jet pack questioning looks, and had joined the agents in their unsuccessful counterattack. All for this moment, so meticulously planned. He had insisted that he could have delivered it with an arrow, but the boss had not liked that plan. Golden Archer was an excellent shot, but he was not Hawkeye. The boss had wanted a one hundred percent chance of success, and that meant only one thing… hand delivery. Everything, had been planned for this fateful moment; the assault, disabling the carrier, even Hyperion insuring that his initial attack left Fury unharmed. All so that Golden Archer could get within arm's reach of Nick Fury.

To the outside observer it must have looked like the agent behind Fury simply used his hand to steady the old war hero in the wake of another lurch, but as it often turned out reality was much different. That steadying hand wore a bracelet that released a needle, injecting a solution. Said solution contained toxins that were highly illegal, but in any investigation would have been found to be all but harmless to a human being. A normal human being, that is. In truth, most of them would have been regarded as an antitoxin. The mixture was not much different than the atropine injections that soldiers used to combat chemical agents. The chemical agent that it was designed to combat, however, was the only thing that was keeping Fury alive. As the needle drove home, Nick Fury's death warrant was signed. As one eye widened in shock and dismay at the feeling that washed over him, Nick Fury's body was flooded with the cure for the Infinity formula that had kept him forever young.

Nick Fury fell amidst a crowd of stunned agents that barely noticed that one of their own was flying off with a Jet pack. As Golden Archer took flight he pressed the button that activated eight pagers; telling the Syndicate - in no uncertain terms - to get the hell out of Dodge. Archer was sure as hell going to do it. Not only because it was what he had been ordered to do, but because it was just a damn good idea. He had just assassinated the leader of the world's foremost intelligence agency, and didn't want to hang around until they figured out what he already knew. Nick Fury was a breathing dead man.

One of the pagers did not go off, because the smashed device that lay next to the shattered body of Amphibian would never make a sound again. Neither would its owner. Beneath the waves, if there had been anyone to hear, telepathic cries of rage and grief filled the echelons of marine life. Over the next few weeks, instances of beached whales would plague the Atlantic coast. The irony that would never be known was that Rice had resolved that this would be his last mission. Like his counterpart on another earth the mutant had his fill of fighting for a cause he neither understood nor condoned. Sick of being used, he was going to leave for the open seas with a clear conscience and the feeling that he had fulfilled his debt to his mysterious benefactor. That would never be, for Kingsley Rice died face down on the deck of the SHIELD hellicarrier's hanger.

Power Princess, her distinctive purple uniform tattered and her magnificent breasts exposed, had just flipped over the stunned Captain America when her pager went off. She realized that she didn't have much time, so she pulled his mask off. His face had been just as she imagined it; strong yet gentle, unyielding yet handsome. It was a good face. She kissed his unknowing, unfeeling lips and just as swiftly flew away. She finally had an answer to the questions that had been plaguing her. Yet she felt no compunction about leaving this man to his fate aboard a listing hellicarrier. He had survived through 80 of the most turbulent years in world history, and she knew that he would survive this too. In her mind, and her experience, there was nothing that could stop fate or interfere with destiny. She would have Captain America. To her mind it was a fact. Therefore, there was nothing to worry about.

As the succession of explosions rocked the helecarrier, destroying any hope that it could have stabilized itself, The Crimson Cowl watched from the window of his high-rise office with a satisfied smirk on his face. He knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that his plan had worked like a charm. He did not let his gaze linger for too long, however, because he needed to turn away from the view in his window. There was always more work to do, and no time to dwell on triumphs when more challenges awaited him.

As it always happened on days like this, a hero emerged from the most unlikely places. Agent Salvador Gerardo had one of the most boring jobs in SHIELD before that day. Piloting the hellicarrier was the ultimate in button pushing redundancy. Mostly navigated by computers and driven by robots his job had been to sit and drink coffee all day. But in the middle of a crisis, when everyone else in the bridge fled in the wake of the rampaging mindless thing that tore through the compartment, Salvador lived up to his name. He saw that the Hellicarrier was on a collision course for Manhattan, and that nothing would stop the decent of the huge aircraft. When he saw that the navigation system was dead and the bots were malfunctioning he cut the power to the grid with a multi tool in his pocket. He went for the manual controls, that most of the operators had forgotten how to use, and took control himself. Even with the limited mobility and destroyed engines, with only antigravity generators to keep the carrier from falling like a rock, for 15 minutes Salvador was the best pilot in the world. He steered the floating wreckage in the direction of the Jersey shore; having grown up in the area and knowing that there was a massive garbage dump where they could safely land. Safely, of course, for the people below. Salvador had no such illusions about his own fate. It is in moments like those, when men think of their fellow man before themselves, that the only ray of light can be seen in the darkness of a battlefield.

Salvador Gerardo saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Manhattan that day, and no one would ever know his name.

* * *

She opened her eyes, fully expecting a different scene than unfolded before her. She knew what had happened. The pain in her hands told her that it had not been a dream. She knew that she should be dead, and had opened her eyes fully expecting the fires of hell and the grinning devil waiting to reward the things that she had done in the name of her country. But as she opened her eyes she saw trees stretching endlessly up into the sky. She saw a blue sky with no hint of the strife that had so brutally ripped her from the relative comfort of her daily routine. Surely this could not be heaven, for any place such as that was not meant for her. Surely she could not be saved. She could not have saved herself. Steve could not have saved her. Nobody could have saved her, as that last searing memory or endless falling gripper her heart.

As she sat up, however, another memory approached her mind. It was a thing felt more than heard or seen. A pair of strong arms slowly bringing her fall to a stop. The sensation of floating, then flying. A voice of gravel speaking words of velvet, and a soft landing in soft grasses. As she looked to her bleeding hands and accepted the fact that she was not dead, Agent Sharon Carter looked around the New Jersey Fen where she had been deposited and wondered if there could possibly be such a thing as guardian angels. She had no idea that, not far away, a man that was not a man flew toward his own destiny. He looked inward, and did not like what he saw. He did not like it at all.

* * *

The impact of the collision was the thing that finally shook Captain America out of his stupor. Falcon had been shaking him, checking him from injuries as the hellicarrier slammed into the New Jersey landfill and was smashed like a beer can. The Falcon had seen the members of the syndicate flee, but had chosen saving his friend over pursuing his enemies. Captain America and the Falcon were side by side as several thousand tons of jet fuel ignited and turned the SHIELD Headquarters into a blazing inferno. It was into this vision of hell that Captain America awoke, but an outside observer could not have told that he was unconscious moments before for how swiftly he leapt into action.

"We've got to save them, Sam!" Cap yelled, seeing safety right outside the hanger door "We have to save as many as we can!"

Falcon grabbed two fallen agents and flew them out the hanger door. Cap swept up Nick Fury in his arms and yelled to the agents to grab their fallen comrades. They did not question the order for a minute, did not think to save themselves because the headquarters could explode at any time. Captain America had ordered them to grab their fellows with a force of command that they could not deny, even if every survival instinct screamed at them to do exactly the opposite. By the time the Falcon flew back into the hanger to grab another agent, Captain America had cleared the hanger. Falcon saw the fallen form of Amphibian, unsure whether he was alive or dead, and knew that Cap would not approve of leaving him behind. Without giving it another thought, he swept up the corpse of Kingsley Rice and rejoined Redwing in the relatively clear air of the garbage dump. He coughed and hacked up blackish mucus from his lungs as he settled down in the garbage. His head was spinning and he only had time to say one more thing before the toxic fumes he inhaled in the burning hellicarrier robbed him of consciousness.

"I really hate this job…" Falcon coughed as he fell into the trash.

The hellicarrier exploded into a terrific fireball, setting the entire landfill aflame.

Captain America rushed through the burning, stinking wasteland as firemen, EMTs and baffled looking police officers ran in all directions. There were moments when even he did not really know what to do, and it was at those moments that his instincts took over and sent his body flying into motion for him. The entire scene looked like something out of a nightmare. Injured and dying SHIELD agents were sprawled out wherever they could find a relatively clean spot to begin treatment. In the middle of a burning garbage dump, that required transporting them over vast and treacherous terrain. That was where Captain America came in. He heaved another agent into a fireman's carry and ran with him, bounding over burning trash and trying to not think too much. In this instance, thought was the enemy. Later there would be enough time to reflect upon the fact that this had been another disaster that he walked away from while so many others hadn't. Later there would be enough time to think about the ones that had not made it out before it exploded. Later there would be time to think about Sharon, who was still unaccounted for. Later would be time enough for tears.

Nick and the Falcon had not stirred, but were simply laying unattended because they had been treated and stabilized. There were agents with third degree burns and severed limbs that were the focus of all the EMT attention at the moment. A fleet of ambulances were shuttling the more severe of the cases, and emergency helicopters were beginning to descend on the site. Captain America did not worry about any of that. It was somebody else's job. His was to get as many people as he could out of the blaze of the landfill. So he ran back into it again and again, his enhanced lungs beginning to weaken from the toxic fumes. Finally, after countless times charging back in he stumbled out with a female agent over his shoulder. He was gasping, hardly able to breathe. The world wavered as a disbelieving fireman took the agent from his arms and watched as Cap swayed like a punch drunk boxer. He fell to his knees and his eyes rolled up in his head. He felt as if his lungs had been filled with wet concrete.

"Medic! Get a damn paramedic for Cap over here!" The fireman yelled in a thick New Jersey accent.

"No." Cap coughed, forcing himself to his feet and rushing back in faster than anyone could stop him.

The world was expanding and contracting like a kaleidoscope as he pushed his body far beyond what God had designed it to do. The serum in his veins fought the toxins in his lungs as his legs pumped under him. He leapt over a blazing pile of aluminum cans in a condition where most men couldn't even walk. The last pile of trash he needed to scrabble over, but he got to the burning wreckage of the hellicarrier once again. He ran through a wall of flames, blocking it aside with his shield. He heard a voice weakly calling out, and finally saw the man struggling for life. He heaved him up upon his back and slowly humped him through the hellish landscape of the dump. If he could only save one more life, he kept telling himself, then he could rest. Then he could let himself collapse to the ground and let the fireman and paramedics do the rest.

He rushed back in five more times, telling himself every time that it was the last time.

* * *

Cap refused treatment, even after he had collapsed. They had needed to restrain him from crawling back into the dump after he had fallen. A short time breathing pure oxygen and he had felt much better. Upon reflection, he should have grabbed a protective mask from one of the Firemen. Shortly after that, the Avengers had arrived out of the sky like angels. Iron-man and Black Knight fought the fire with special flame-retardant foam sprayers they had mounded on their armor. Captain Marvel had explored the blaze in her hologram form and told Quasar where the survivors were. Wendell had used his powers to create quantum stretchers to fly out several hundred more survivors than Cap could ever hope to. Wonder Man tore the wreckage of the hellicarrier open with his bare hands, ignoring the flames that would have vaporized the flesh of a normal man.

Through all this the Wasp stayed with Cap, continually asking him if he was unhurt and then expressing just how happy it made her that he was. He had forced himself to stand as he did his best to huff down pure oxygen, but ironically he could not have stood if it were not for the arm he had wrapped around the shoulder of the tiny heroine. She held him tightly, not caring that he smelled of blood, offal, and burnt garbage.

"We've all been so worried about you, Steve." Janet said, her arms tightly wrapped around his waist as he huffed oxygen. "We've all hoped every day that you would come back to us."

"I guess that this wasn't the best entrance." Cap coughed weakly.

"It doesn't matter. We're just glad you're back."

"I'm not back, Jan." Steve rasped "Nothing has changed. My resignation still stands, even if I don't know where I do."

Steve collapsed to his knees again and Janet wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She pulled his head between her breasts and cried as she looked at the carnage all around. She was supposed to be a hero, but this all had overwhelmed her. It reminded her so much of the rubble of Avengers mansion left over after the siege by the Masters of Evil. Monica had told her, years later, that she had found Cap weeping in the wreckage. Janet found that hard to believe then, and found it even harder now that she looked at the furious resolve etched on his face. Why did this keep happening to him? He was one of her oldest friends, and She could cry for him, even if he would not cry for himself.

"I'm going to get them." Cap gasped, the only reason that Janet could understand it was because she was holding him so close "I'm going to make them pay for this."

Janet Van Dyne heard this, and didn't doubt it for a moment. She knew this man that she embraced as well as she had known any man in her life. She knew his bravery and his resourcefulness. She knew his intensity and his tenacity. She knew that, once he set his mind on a mission, nothing and no one could make him stop. Nothing could deter him, and nothing could convince him. But if we were to look deeper, to the secret that she held in her soul, the words did not comfort her as much as they terrified her.

* * *

Steve Rogers entered a familiar battleground.

Mount Sinai hospital was one of the several hospitals in the area that got flooded with the legion of SHIELD agents, but it seemed to once again be a place of significance to Captain America. It was here that he had struggled with his life, here where Rachel struggled with hers, and now where it looked like Nick Fury would end his days. The funny thing about battlegrounds is that they could look like the most innocuous of places. In war movies they always seemed like bomb-blasted hell grounds, but that was often the portrayal of men who had only seen what was left after the battle was completed. Captain America had fought on battlegrounds in the pacific that were island paradises, watching exotic birds chirp happily in the trees and small mammals mate in the grass while men crawled through the tall grasses with death on their minds. In France he had stood in winter wonderlands that would have made great ski resorts in different circumstances, only to run through a shower of bullets shortly afterward. The worst battlefields were the crowded streets; women holding the hands of their children and running through steaming piles of offal while bullets reigned all around. While battlefields were not always ugly, battles almost always were.

Falcon was going to be all right. They were not even going to keep him overnight for observation. His smoke inhalation had been more serious since he had been flying high instead of crouching low like Cap, but he would probably be released before the day was done because they needed the bed for the other patients. It had been an uncomfortable scene in that room, gathered around Falcon's bed. Falcon had not wanted to be there, and the assembled Avengers looked as if they were not sure what they were doing there. Weak pleasantries were exchanged until Captain America finally left the room. He couldn't stand to be there a moment longer. Only Wendell had came out after him. Somehow, Steve knew that he would have to tolerate the company.

Captain America and Quasar walked down the corridor toward Nick's room without saying a word. Somehow, no words were needed. The one-eyed soldier that lay in that hospital bed had been a part of both of their lives, and both understood why the other wanted to see him. It just made some kind of sense that they would see him together. They had heard what the doctors had told them, but neither would believe it until they saw it with their own eyes. Nick Fury, the doctors said, was rapidly dying of old age. As the two of them walked into the room, past a nurse that was looking at the door as if it was the gateway to a haunted house, their hearts sank.

Nick Fury's hair had gone completely white. Not gray, but as white as the pale stripes on a brand new American flag. His skin, once only troubled by the barest beginnings of crows feet, now looked like parchment. He was still muscular, but those muscles seemed to have a curious softness to them that were not there before. He looked to be about sixty years old. If that had happened in these few hours, how long would it be until he looked eighty?

"He's resting…" The nurse said timidly behind Cap.

"Is he going to be ok?" Quasar asked her, somewhat naively.

"Kid…" Fury croaked, his eyes snapping open "That you?"

"I'm here Nick." Cap said "Quasar too."

"The damn kid… leader o' the Avengers… doesn't that beat all…" Nick rambled.

"Hello Nick." Wendell managed.

"How are you doing, you old war horse?" Cap asked.

"A little older…" Nick offered weakly. "I guess it had to happen sometime."

"I'm going to find who did this to you, Nick." Cap promised "I'm going to make them pay for all the good men who died today. I'm going to find out how they did this, and how to reverse it."

"I don't doubt ya for a moment." Nick coughed. "I feel sorry for the worthless sons o' bitches, with you on their trail."

"The Avengers will do everything they can for you, Colonel Fury." Quasar added, having never felt familiar enough with Fury to use his given name "I've already contacted Hank Pym, and he is going to consult with your doctors on the toxin that was used on you."

"Wouldn't need him… if we still had the SHIELD lab." Nick wheezed "These bastards knew what they were doing, and they knew who they were after."

Cap silently assented, knowing full well that the Syndicate was completely and totally incapable of coordinating such a sophisticated assault on their own. It was too bold and audacious for that. This had the Crimson Cowl's fingerprints all over it, although who the man was still remained a mystery. He had hit him again, and hit him hard. He was tired of being hit, and was more than ready to hit back. Not only for Nick, not only for the Avengers, not only for the SHIELD agents, Rachel, or any of the others victims of the private war. He was going to strike back for himself. Whoever wore the Crimson Cowl this time around, he had chosen the wrong enemy in Steven Grant Rogers.

"Cap…" Nick mumbled weakly.

"What is it, Nick?" Cap said, drawing closer so that he could hear him.

"Remember Bastogne." Nick almost whispered as he clasped his forearm "Never forget…. Bastogne."

"For me… it was almost yesterday." Cap said with uncharacteristic gentleness as he clasped his hand over Fury's grip.

Quasar looked on uncomfortably, feeling almost like an intruder. Captain America was the Living Legend of World War II; the embodiment of the nation's fighting spirit. Nick Fury was the nearly eternal representation of the war's reality. The young man was of an entirely different generation than these two grizzled warriors. They were both older than his dear, departed father. He listened to them talk of times before he was born with wide eyed wonderment, and a sadness deeper than he had thought possible. Quasar was protector of the universe, but these men had dedicated themselves to protecting but a small part of it. As he heard them talking about it, he realized that did not necessarily make it any easier.

* * *

December 1944

The cold could be felt in their bones.

The 101st Airborne Division had parachuted into Normandy, but that had been the last time that they were Airborne. The rest of the time it had been a long, hard march. There was good news that kept them going. General Irwin Rommel had instigated a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler, and even though it had failed it had cost the Germans their most brilliant military mind. Shortly after the French Resistance, bolstered by the allied invasion, began a bloody uprising against the Vichy regime. For six months the "Screaming Eagles" of the 101st fought daily in the push to the Siegfried line, liberating France mile by mile. Sometimes it seemed like they were only doing it farm by farm. They reached the line in September, but by then the bone chilling cold had set in. Then, in December, all hell had broken loose. History would call it the battle of the Bulge, but all that the troops huddling in the frozen waste knew was the name that had been scrawled on their map. That name was Bastogne.

"Tell me again what the General told them." Nick Fury laughed.

"Nuts." Captain America answered, trying to hold in his own laughter but not succeeding.

The commander of the 101st had been given a message from the Germans detailing their terms for surrender. This was, without a doubt, a situation where surrender was warranted. He had, however, sent them a one word response that puzzled the German translators. They were probably still trying to figure it out. Meanwhile Captain America, Bucky, and the Howling Commandos were out among the grunts, kneeling in hasty fighting positions and foxholes trying to keep warm any way they could. The grunts got word of what their commander had said and they all laughed, knowing that was exactly like the man. Exactly like their entire unit, down to the last company and platoon. If the Germans wanted to win this one, they were going to make them work for it. They were going to make them pay for it in blood and bone.

They all looked cold and miserable despite their laughter. Like everyone else in the fighting perimeter they were dressed in olive drab field jackets and two pairs of pants tucked into their boots. Bucky almost looked like a kid ready to go play in the snow. If he was going to do that, he had picked the right place. In all directions the snow stretched out before them. The only place that snowy plain led to, though, was the German positions. The allies had penetrated too far into the German held territories, and the Germans had massed an enormous counterattack to encircle the 101st in a cage of tanks and artillery. It was the most hopeless situation that one could imagine coming into a war. One that the Russian soldiers on the eastern front had faced time and again. No food, little water other than what could be gotten from melted snow. Cold, miserable, cut off from all supplies or reinforcements. It was here that Captain America realized what it was to be an infantryman: Cold, hungry, abandoned, forsaken, forgotten, and totally alone.

Yet they laughed.

What could make men such as these, in the most dire situation of their still young lives, laugh at the hovering face of death that leered from bomb craters and growled from their own stomachs? It was something that those that have never faced such times will never understand. It was not carefree or cavalier, for such men did not long survive in war no matter how it seemed in the movies. It was that feeling, ever so intangible, that they had done this before and that they could do this again. These were the men who invaded on D-day, fought their way through the hedgerows, and let neither armor nor minefields stop their steady advance. They had been told, every step of the way, that they could win and that everything they did would help that eventual victory. Above all, most importantly, they had been told that once the job was done they could go home. Other than that, there was only one reason that these men could be in high spirits. This was, after all, no ordinary day. It was Christmas eve.

Kneeling in the snow, the Battered Bastards of Bastogne sat under the Christmas star and thumbed their noses at the Germans in the darkness… daring them to do their worst.

Later that night the bombardment of Bastogne began again.

The chattering of machine gun fire and the whistling of shells competed for attention with the terrific explosions of crashing bombs. Everyone had found what shelter they could find; doing their best to wait out the bombardment while making sure that the Germans could not creep up on their positions. Captain America ran from position to position, making sure that everyone was fine and not in a situation that they couldn't handle. The roar of the shelling was as dangerous to the mind as it was to the body. He had seen it too many times before. Terrorism had ever been a part of war when it came to laying a siege. The attacking army would perform atrocities to crush the morale of their opponents. The Mongols once catapulted plague-infected corpses into a fortress that they could not take by force, and that was the first recorded use of biological weapons. The Romans performed mass executions and tore down cities stone by stone, salting the earth so that crops would never grow there again. In the modern age, however, terror could fall from the sky. Packaged in little metal capsules dropped at the flip of a switch by men with blank, unfeeling eyes. They flipped their switches and Bastogne burned.

"We need more men on the western wall!" Fury howled at Cap as the super soldier ran from one foxhole to another. "The krauts are making their move there, trying to break through!"

"We don't have any more men!" Cap screamed back, his voice almost lost in the cacophony of explosions.

"Yes we do!" Fury yelled "Inside the perimeter!"

"We've already grabbed every cook, radio operator, typewriter clerk and translator!" Cap yelled back, scrambling through the snow.

"We have infantrymen." Fury said solemnly.

"No." Cap said, in denial of what Nick was suggesting.

"It's the only way!" Fury croaked.

"No!" Cap yelled more emphatically.

"You're the only one that can do it!" Nick hollered after him as the Super Soldier ran to another fighting position. "You know it! You know what needs to be done."

Inside the bunker Bucky was rallying the troops inside, holding his Colt .45 in one fist and peering out the machine gun slit with a look of grim determination. Buck had a five o clock shadow just like all the other young men here. It was remarkable how little he looked like a boy anymore. He was about to turn 18 out here in the battlefields of France. How many years had it been since that young boy discovered his identity and changed his life forever?

"You know that old saying how you aren't supposed to fire until you see the whites of their eyes?" Buck yelled at the troops "Forget that crap! Just as soon as you see Fritz stick his pointy head out from behind a snow bank you blow it off! I know that I'm gonna do it! I'm sick of these Krauts and I'm going to send them all some steel-jacketed Christmas cheer!"

The roar came up from the troops and Steve smiled. It seemed like the young man had learned more from him than just how to karate chop a spy or execute a perfect back flip. James Buchanan Barnes wasn't just a mascot in a colorful uniform anymore. He was a soldier through and through, and the other soldiers responded to him not because he was a paragon of perfection like Cap, but rather because he was just like the rest of them. Just another Joe doing what he had to do to survive a living nightmare that politicians liked to call a war. Cap saw the discarded piece of paper near Bucky's gear. It had been a letter that he said he was writing to Jackie. He dropped it the second the bombardment started, and hadn't given it a second thought. Just like everything in a war, even love was discarded the minute the bombs started dropping.

Cap looked at all of them and felt very old. Too old to be a man in his early twenties. The soldiers around him had not given up hope in this hopeless situation, so how could he? They were all so tired, so ragged, and so brave. Still, there was a burden that he was carrying that they were not. That much had been obvious ever since D-Day. They believed in him and depended on him to mend their broken spirits, and yet who was there to mend his? The things that had been asked of him - the things that had been asked of them all - were things that should not have to be asked of anyone. He knew this, but he couldn't let them see it. He had to keep his own fears, doubts, and apprehension concealed under his blue mask. To fail in this would be disastrous, and this was the burden that he had carried every day since Professor Erskrine died in his arms.

"I've got to go inside the perimeter, Buck." Cap told him "I'm going to be coming back with reinforcements. You hold down the fort here and don't let the Jerry's take an inch of this city."

Bucky looked back at him with confusion.

"Where are you going to get more troops? Give the General's staff rifles?" Bucky asked sarcastically.

Cap's only answer was a sad expression.

"No." Bucky said so silently he almost mouthed it.

Cap nodded.

"They can't… no way, Cap!" Bucky said.

"I don't have a choice." Cap said "None of us do."

* * *

As Cap walked up to the tent Colonel Kinnard stood outside it, looking almost as bad as some of the men out on the line. He looked as if he had not ate or slept since September. There were dark rings under the heavy pouches beneath the bloodshot eyes that looked at him intently. The burden of command was much heavier than was portrayed in the movies… at least for the men that gave a damn. Cap didn't salute him, but that was not because of a lack of respect. He had not saluted a superior officer since Normandy, and not one of them had said a thing about it. Sometimes he wondered why.

"You don't have to do this, Captain." The Colonel insisted.

"I know." Cap said "If I don't do it, who will?"

The Colonel sighed deeply and turned away as Cap strode into the tent. He had to keep his shoulder's square, his chin high. He had to keep his feeling from reaching his eyes. The men in here were not interested in Steve Rogers, his compassion, or his pity. They needed to see Captain America. The Sentinel of Liberty. The Living Legend. The Super Soldier that deep inside they all wanted to be. He had to summon this man, create him from whole cloth, because he did not exist in reality. He had to become this man, at least in his mind, to do his duty.

"Hello, Soldiers." Cap said as he entered the tent. He didn't bother asking how they were doing because he could see it just by looking at them.

The symphony of voices that greeted him made his sunken heart momentarily rise. They all cried out in surprise to see him. Some of the voices were full of love and admiration that wouldn't have been heard if Rita Hayworth had walked into the tent. After all that they had been through these men loved him like a brother. They had accepted him as one of their own and given him a special place. How would they feel if they knew that under all these muscles was a skinny weakling named Steve, who's heart was now bleeding more than the bodies of the men before him. For this was the tent of what the Doctors had designated "walking wounded." Men who had already done their duty. Men who had already given it their all in the field of battle and would be forever scarred by the experience.

He could barely look at them. The man nearest to him was missing an eye, and had a wad of gauze crammed into the crater in his face. Another had his entire face wrapped like Lon Chaney in "The Invisible Man." Who knew what was under there. Another was missing a hand at the wrist. Yet another had a foot elevated. Part of it was missing. How these men could be considered "walking wounded" was by the furthest stretch of the imagination. He had felt the pain of wounds at Normandy and elsewhere, and had the scars to show for them. But he had never been hurt as badly as these men had. Yet, there spirit was undiminished. He knew it. He could see it like a spark within all of them. If was up to him to fan that spark into a flame. There was perhaps 30 of them in all, and they all looked to him.

"I just wanted to tell all you men that I'm proud of you. I'm proud of all that you've done. I'm so glad that I had the opportunity to know you men… and to fight with you." Cap said honestly. "I'm also here… to bring bad news."

"What is it, Cap?" A soldier with his arm in a sling asked.

"The Germans… are massing an enormous assault on the western wall. We don't have enough men to defend it without leaving the other sides undefended. If they break through the perimeter… it's all over."

"Oh God…" A man with a gauze-swathed buttocks gasped.

"I am here… to ask for volunteers… to come with me to defend the western front." Cap said with difficulty, his heart hemorrhaging with every word.

Silence reigned in the tent.

"But… we're all… I don't even have a foot." One of the soldiers said in disbelief.

"I am not here to bully any of you. All of you have done your part in my book. I'm only here to ask a few of you… who think that you can make it." Cap said, the blood in his heart running like a waterfall. Was it possible to die of a bleeding heart? This was the hardest thing he had ever done in his entire life.

"I can do it, Cap." A tough sounding soldier came forward, but he only had one hand. "I'll need somebody to help me load my magazine, but I can still kill a Kraut or two."

"I'll go." The one missing part of his foot said, ripping his bed sheet and cramming part of it into a boot "I'm sick of laying around this tent anyway."

"I can't." A trembling soldier with tears in his eyes sobbed "I'm sorry, Cap. I'm so damn sorry but I can't go back out there."

"It's alright. You don't have to, soldier." Cap said softly, patting him on the shoulder.

Ten soldiers in all stood up, some walking and some hobbling. Putting on uniforms still splattered with their blood. Helping each other button them up. Cap walked over and helped the soldier with his arm in a sling himself. He buttoned his field jacket over the sling. The man smiled at him as he did it. How could he smile at the man who was forcing him to face death again after he had already sacrificed so much? Ten soldiers, but it wasn't enough.

"I have to ask. I hate to ask, but are the rest of you men sure that you cannot volunteer?" Cap asked with no anger. "All of your lives are depending on what happens over there on the western wall. I can promise you that you will be held in reserve, so that more able bodied men will be able to be sent forward. All I need is a few more volunteers."

"If we don't volunteer, will you start picking us?" A man with an apparently superficial head wound asked.

"No." Cap said emphatically "You men know yourselves. You are the only ones that know what you are capable of. I wouldn't even be here asking if you hadn't already proven to me what you were made of. I will not force a single one of you to go back out to face the Germans, but I know that if you do… the Nazis will rue the day they ever decided to come to Bastogne."

He looked at their eyes and knew that he had them, the same way that a batter knows that he has hit a home run before it ever clears the fence. He didn't have to look to know that every single man in this tent was going to put on their uniform and limp back out into that snow. The medics were standing by with clean dressings and morphine injectors, fully prepared to drag these men out to the firing line and continue their treatment out there. The reserve nest of the western wall was going to be part hospital, part fighting position. It had already been decided, and it was Captain America's job to make it seem like it was the men's own choice. Years later, this story would still be told by those few that survived. It would never be forgotten.

Captain America would never forget Christmas Day in Bastogne. The gift that many men gave to their country over that long night was their lives, and in the morning it was their bodies that were wrapped and taken back to the center of the perimeter. As the sun rose on the embattled city, the promised relief still had not arrived. Patton's tanks were still battling through the snow. They had another day and night of this to look forward to. Their finest hour and the Nazis last hurrah. The die was cast, and everybody knew that. The sun brought a modicum of warmth and hope. The dark of the night had passed, the shelling had stopped, and Bastogne still stood. The next day the 3rd Army would arrive to relieve them, and that would be the best Christmas present that they would ever get. Better late than never.

* * *

"There are so many things that I'm not proud of, Nick." Cap told the old man "So many things that nobody knows a thing about."

"It's none of their damn business." Fury growled. "They weren't there, so what the hell do they know?"

Quasar stood silently in the corner, hoping not to draw attention to himself.

"My guys might be scraped up… banged up… this Cowl character sure punched us in the mouth. You go to every one of them, though. I hand picked every one of them. They'll get up off that bed just like the Bastards did…"

"No." Cap said "Not this time, Nick. All of this is my fault. Not the Avengers, and not SHIELD. Mine. This is my war and I'm going to fight it on my own."

"You do what you have to do, Hero." The old man growled "But you hear this… I'm not going to be in this bed forever, and when I get out of it I'm going after the Cowl. He better hope that you get there before I do."

Cap smiled. It seemed like Nick hadn't changed as much as he thought.

"Hey, Kid." Fury croaked at Quasar.

"Yes sir?" Wendell answered.

"I hand picked you, too." Fury said with an intense, one eyed glare "I know that you haven't forgotten that."

"No sir." Quasar said grimly "I haven't."

Shortly afterward Captain America and Quasar walked out of the hospital together. They stood there in silence, as if deciding what to say. Finally, it was Quasar who broke the silence.

"The Avengers aren't going to just stand by and let you go off on your own private crusade." Wendell challenged him "You taught us all better than that."

"The Avengers mission is to tackle threats that none of us could overcome alone." Cap said "Yet Avengers have always had the freedom to combat threats individually without interference if we could handle them on our own."

"Which situation do you think this is, Cap?" Quasar asked.

Steve just looked to the Cosmic Avenger, knowing that he couldn't lie to him.

"I can't drag the Avengers into this. The Cowl, for whatever reason, is after me. He wants to destroy every advantage that I have over him and force me to face him alone. Look what happened to SHIELD!"

"I see what happened, and do you think that doesn't make me angry?" Wendell raised his voice "I used to be a SHIELD agent! I trained and fought next to a lot of those men and women that died today! Don't you think that I feel a personal vendetta against the Cowl and the Syndicate for what they did? I'm not going to go off alone, half cocked, to take them on. You trained me better than that."

"I'm proud of you, Wendell. I don't mean to be patronizing, but I am really proud of you. I saw how you led the Avengers today, and for the first time I really realized why you are the leader of the Avengers… and I'm not." Cap said as he turned and walked away.

"Cap! Wait!" Wendell yelled, using his command voice, but Captain America had heard - and ignored - much better ones than Quasar's.

In a golden flash Wendell was in front of him, looking cross.

"Here." Quasar said, holding out a small device. "Its not as flashy as the Identicard, but we're on a federal budget now. If you change your mind, or you run into a situation that you can't handle… just push the button."

Without argument, Steve reached out and took the device.

"I can promise that much." Cap said.

"Where are you going to go, Steve?" Wendell asked, almost begging.

"Westchester." Cap said, knowing everything that implied "I have some old friends to see… some things to straighten out."

Quasar nodded, bit his lip as if to keep in a comment he deemed inappropriate, and began to fly away.

"Good luck, Steve." Quasar said, using Cap's Christian name for the first time that the old soldier could recall. "Good hunting."

* * *

So we pass the crux of everything.

Another time of crisis has passed, and Captain America stands to fight another day. Through almost seven decades as humans reckon time his crusade has continued. I have watched it raptly, and seen all his successes and failures. This is an ending of sorts, but one that brings a new beginning. I turn to look over my shoulder to see the stern visages of my brothers. They have come to deliver my punishment, and I am awaiting it gladly. They do not understand why I intervened on behalf of an inferior being. They do not understand why I appeared to Quasar and put into his mind the future that was to happen if the Avengers did not appear when they did. It is the image I viewed in one of my monitors into the alternate futures of my sector. The Image of Captain America, dead, surrounded by the Sinister Syndicate. For they were about to renew their assault, with orders to take Captain America alive, and they would have found him unwilling to be taken alive. But that future did not come to pass. Because the Avengers did appear and the Syndicate chose the greater part of valor.

I look again to that image that I could not bear, and then I look to my brothers. I see no compassion in them, and wonder - not for the first time - what it is that makes me so different. I look to the image of the prime reality, with a living Captain America ready to accept the challenges that lay ahead. I feel no guilt at violating my oath, and somehow know that the Captain would understand. After all, he is different too. Unique among his kind in a way that they do not appreciate. Yet more like them than they will ever admit. My brothers circle around me without words, preparing to administrate their punishment. I have seen what lies ahead for the Captain, and once again wish that I could intervene. I know that I cannot. I have done as much as I can. I have done as much as my brethren will tolerate. But I will not shy away. I will not fail in my duty. For I am Uatu, the Watcher.

I can only watch.

**Next: Victims**

**What will happen when the X-men get an unexpected visitor? What is the secret that the Wasp is hiding? Can Captain America heal the wounds of the past? Tune in next week, True Believers!**


	17. Victims

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Chapter Fifteen: Victims**

Captain America looked like hell.

As he walked down the corridors of the hospital he looked and smelled like a dumpster full of smashed ass. He smelled like burnt garbage and was so streaked with soot that it was hard to tell the primary colors of the uniform that he wore. It was at the top of his agenda to visit his gifted tailor/dry cleaner in Brooklyn to repair and refurbish this uniform, which he held in as much reverence as he did the flag. First, though, there was something else to do. He had checked the rolls of every SHIELD agent that had been accounted for, and found the one that he was looking for in a small hospital in Jersey. She was suffering from surprisingly minor wounds considering what had happened, and for that he was extremely thankful. After all the years, and all that they had experienced together, Steve could not imagine losing her again to something like this. Their romance may have been history, but he certainly didn't want her to be.

"She's one of the lucky ones." The harried PA told him quickly as he shuttled from one room to the other "She's just got some bruises and a few nasty cuts on her hands. She's shaken up mostly."

"That's good to hear… or at least as good as can be expected." Cap said, but the PA had already turned his back and ran off. Probably holding his nose.

"Sharon?" Cap called to her from outside the room.

There was only silence.

"Sharon, this is…"

"I know who it is."

"May I come in?"

"Is there anything that I can do to stop you?"

Cap scowled.

"Just say the word."

"Word."

"If that Is what you want, I'll respect your wishes. I wish that you felt differently, but I just wanted you to know how glad I am that you're all right."

"Thanks for caring, boy scout." The hateful voice came from within.

Cap exhaled loudly, trying to maintain his composure.

"Goodbye Sharon." he said.

"Good riddance." He heard her say as he walked off down the hall.

Captain America didn't look back. As much as she had meant to him, that was in the past. As usual there were too many things to worry about in the here and now to keep him busy. He had a job to do. He had a mission, and that was when Captain America was at his best. Alone in her room Sharon Carter told herself that she wasn't going to cry. Sometimes, if you tell yourself that you are not going to do something enough, you can ignore that fact that you are already doing it.

* * *

Everything in life has a specific taste, and as anyone who has experienced it can attest to… failure tastes like shit.

Hyperion always had the same objective when he took his team out on an operation. No matter how dangerous, not matter now daring, he would accept nothing less than every one of them coming back alive. Even as the others celebrated around him, reveling in the perfectly planned and executed attack on the SHIELD headquarters, he was torn apart inside. He had known that Amphibian was missing after the attack. This was not unusual of the man, who was an independent spirit who was known not to report in until it suited him. He had just gotten the phone call, though. The one that told him that Kingsley Rice was dead on arrival at New York Metropolitan hospital. That was all it took for riotous success to become abysmal failure. The phone shattered in his unearthly strong grip, exploding into shards of plastic, and the celebration around him abruptly ground to a halt.

"Amphibian… is dead." He heard the words force themselves through his throat.

When people think about super villains they do not think of them in the same terms of other people. They do not think that they could possess the traits of loyalty or empathy such as the heroes that we revere. After all, they are the enemy. Those that think this would be surprised to see the faces of the Sinister Syndicate at that moment. But we must look, for this is not a story that shies away from the truth for the sake of convention. Observe the tears that come to the eyes of Moonglow, who knew him the least. See the looks of disbelief on the faces of Speed Demon and Power Princess… who lost track of him during the battle in the hanger. Notice how Black Eagle is the first to move, putting his mace through an expensive piece of furniture in an unexpected explosion of rage. See Golden Archer's face fall as the sense of triumph drains from him like water through a sieve. Try not to laugh as Doctor Spectrum pushes a prostitute off of his lap and onto the floor. As much as we would not like to think so, criminals are people too.

We turn away, and leave the Syndicate to mourn their fallen.

* * *

Westchester, NY was everything that the city itself was not. Green, open, and almost rural In places. At least as rural as things ever got in the state of New York. The Mansion of Charles Xavier, and its surrounding estate, was in an extremely pricey neighborhood. It was the kind of neighborhood that Steve Rogers couldn't even dream about walking through when he was a kid. He wondered how many of the kids that in that mansion realized how lucky they were. Regardless of what kind of hand genetics had dealt them, they had found a wonderful place that they could call home and people who cared about them. Everyone should be that lucky. He looked through the window of the yellow cab as he pulled up and saw a winter wonderland complete with snow men and leftover Christmas decorations. It hardly looked like the headquarters of the notorious band of mutant activists known as the X-men.

Steve stepped out of the cab, dressed in civilian clothes. He had left his uniform with the dry cleaner, who had let him know honestly that it would take a couple of days. He gave the cabbie a generous tip, remembering the days when he was just a scrawny kid hauling luggage for a buck a day. The man, who had identified himself as Lockley, had been pretty chatty and had engaged him in conversation the entire way. He didn't seem to realize that he was Captain America, but Steve figured that he knew and was just playing along to be polite. Cabbies knew, more than anything, how to be discreet.

As the cab pulled away Steve began his walk down the driveway. It was a short distance to the gate, which looked like it could stop a Sherman tank. There was a buzzer connected to a surveillance camera, but given the nature of this place it would not surprise him a bit if he had already been scanned by a multitude of surveillance equipment. Even if that was not the case, there was certainly a telepath or two that would insure that he was expected. He wondered if they scanned for weapons. He had heard that they had even started to do that at public schools these days. The only weapon he carried was concealed in his old portfolio case, and he was sure that they would understand that it was not exactly something that he could leave laying around. He had decided to take a low key approach to his visit. He probably could have just as easily jumped the fence in the middle of the night. He hadn't had a good misunderstanding fight with the X-men in a long time. Given the nature of his mission, however, that might be somewhat counterproductive.

To no surprise, the gate buzzed open before he even pushed the button. He was glad, because he had not been looking forward to jumping that fence. He walked the pathway to the door of the mansion, in no hurry, idly wondering what kind of chaos his visit was causing within. Falcon had told him of his reception, and Cap hoped that his would be somewhat warmer. He would understand if it wasn't. He remembered the conversation that he had with Cyclops. He remembered the betrayed looks on the faces of all the mutant Avengers. He knew what was important to the people that were within this mansion, and they were the same things that he kept close to his heart. Liberty and equality. They wanted for mutants and humans to live in harmony, and did not find that naïve even though humans could not live harmoniously with themselves. They spent their lives in the pursuit of this dream, and - as a man who chased the dream all his life - Steve Rogers understood that perfectly.

Steve stopped in the middle of the walkway, between two copses of trees, still looking straight ahead. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"Are you going to come out and say hello?" Steve said loudly to no visible person… in fluent German.

There was a moment of stillness, and then a dark form back flipped out of a nearby tree and landed on all fours. A narrow pair of bright yellow eyes stared out from dark blue features, and a diabolical tail twitched like a serpent above the head of the crouching mutant.

_"Guten tag Haupmann."_ The blue-furred mutant known as Nightcrawler said formally "How did you know it was I?"

"It smelled like somebody lit a match." Cap replied honestly, not seeing the point in being mysterious. The hand that wasn't holding his portfolio was in the pocket of his winter jacket and he stood casually. His posture must have relaxed the mutant, because he slowly returned to a standing position and relaxed.

"I thought Wolverine had a good nose." Kurt Wagner said with a twitch of his tail.

"Mine's only a little better than the average nose." Cap said with a shrug "I'm actually surprised that more people don't tell you. You should try to teleport downwind next time. That is, if it is necessary."

"If it is needful, I will take that advice." Kurt then realized that they had been conversing the entire time in German "Where did you learn the language?"

There was a moment of silence.

"Do you really need to ask?" Cap replied softly, in English.

Nightcrawler fidgeted uncomfortably for a moment before reverting to his normally unflappable nature.

"I assume that you are here to see Wanda." He said with a smile that did not seem all that totally sincere. It must have been the one that he showed the audience every night at the circus as he was cavorting for their amusement.

"Is that a problem?" Cap asked in a non-confrontational tone of voice.

"Ur… not for me." Nightcrawler protested too much.

"But it is for others." Cap finished for him "They sent you to be the hachetman."

"It isn't that… really." Kurt protested "It is just that in the time that they have been here I have come to care for… them all. You understand? Many of us have, and are not looking forward to the day when you will come to take them away."

"That is not why I am here." Steve assured him "The government's position has not changed, and neither has mine. They are not Avengers anymore, and neither am I. That doesn't mean that they aren't my friends. That is why I am here. Some things are more important than teams or names."

Kurt sighed "They were right about you."

Steve looked at him quizzically.

"You have a golden tongue, and your sincerity is impossible to hide. I can see why they are afraid to face you. You are persuasive indeed. They are afraid that they could not help but want to do whatever you say. I understand why they sent me instead." The mutant said, his tail twitching more rapidly.

"Why is that?" Cap asked.

"Because I do not believe in you, Captain." Kurt said bluntly, his eyes narrowing "Moreover, I do not believe you."

"The elf has a point." A gruff voice came from the tree line, and in the shadow of a tree Steve saw a match being struck.

"Logan!" Nightcrawler shouted "I told you…"

"Shaddup." The Canadian mutant known as Wolverine said between puffs as he lit his cigar. The light of the match illuminated his face in the shadows.

"Hello, Wolverine." Cap said with stiff formality.

"Hi yerself, wing head." Wolverine said in a puff of cigar smoke "Like I said… the elf has a point. Why should any of us believe anything that you say?"

"I could ask you just as easily why you wouldn't?"

"I'm asking the questions here, bub." Wolverine grumbled as he stalked up on the super soldier. "So why don't you go on and answer it?"

The two men locked eyes, neither one of them willing to give and inch, and Nightcrawler unwisely interposed himself between them.

"Captain… I think that it would be best if you left."

"I respectfully disagree." Captain America said without hesitation "If the others do not wish to see me I would appreciate hearing it from them."

"Let me put it to you like this, bub." Wolverine said with another puff on his cigar "If Chuck were here, he would probably roll out the red carpet and greet you at the door with tea. If Slim were here he would probably do the same thing just because its what Chuck would do. Neither one of them are here, and you just showed up in the middle of a school day. Everybody can't just drop everything that they're doing because flag butt shows up expecting a brass band."

"I'll wait." Cap said crisply "Inside preferably, outside if necessary."

"You are one stubborn son of a…" Wolverine began before the snow around them started blowing into little flurries.

It was no surprise to see the beautiful white-haired African woman that was riding the wind. Ironically enough, it was the two mutant men that looked up apprehensively while Captain America looked up without a trace of fear. Storm settled to the ground, her furious eyes pure white with the charge of her powers. She did not looked pleased at all.

"You two." She said coldly "I would like to know why you have waylaid this guest like a couple of brigands."

BAMF!

Nightcrawler disappeared in a puff of brimstone, and Wolverine looked like he wanted to.

"There ain't nothing going on here, Ororo." Logan growled "Just a little bit o' guy talk."

"You have my apologies, Captain." Storm said, looking to where Steve had not budged throughout the entire exchange "I am embarrassed that you have been treated this way, and I will do whatever I can to make it up to you."

"That isn't necessary." Cap said, flashing a neutral glance at Wolverine "There was no harm done."

"Please come in to the mansion… out of the cold. I know that they will be glad to see you." Storm said, taking Steve's arm to escort him down the walkway.

"That would be great." Cap said, with a final backward glance to the sullen form that was slipping back into the wood line "It is a little chilly out here."

"You must forgive them." Storm almost whispered to him as they walked together. "As you might have gathered, your recent actions have been the cause of… a great deal of controversy. Not everyone knows what to believe."

"I understand." Cap told her, just as quietly.

"Do you now?" Storm said with a raised eyebrow.

"I know how I would feel in your shoes." Cap said "I cast the vote to throw mutants out of the Avengers and then I quit. It doesn't look very good at all."

"I think it hurts them more… because they believed in you." Storm said "I've never believed in anyone but myself. Perhaps that is why it is easier for me to forgive. You have shown me so much just by having the courage to come here."

They continued, arm in arm, in a comfortable silence. Wolverine watched them go from a cloud of cigar smoke. His features showed nothing of what he was thinking as he watched the Captain and Storm walking together. The man known as Wolverine had spent his entire life containing a rage so immense that most human beings could not conceive of it. The woman he loved walked closely with a man with whom he had a… complex history with. It was a minor test in comparison.

* * *

Steve waited in some kind of drawing room with a fireplace. She had brought him a huge mug of hot chocolate and made some kind of bawdy remark about hot chocolate that totally went over his head until he thought about it for a moment. When she left she was smiling and he was trying not to blush. Even after all this time Steve still had not really gotten over how much more flirtatious modern women were. Even those that, like Storm, considered themselves proper ladies. Things certainly had changed. The room itself was very comfortable, and thus was a place where Steve felt remarkably uncomfortable. He tried to settle into the plush sofa and sip his hot chocolate, but even pretending that he was content was impossible when he was screaming inside. It wasn't just what had happened to the helicarrier, although that was tearing at his insides like some insidious monster in a science fiction movie. It wasn't just what had happened to Rachel, or the Avengers, or between him and Bernie. It was the past, that he had slowly been releasing like a pressure valve. It wasn't enough. It was pushing him, demanding to be spoken. Let them all know what kind of man he really was.

The door opened, and he turned to face a young redhead who almost seemed to be sneaking into the room. He smiled at her as she walked meekly into the room. Her expression was unreadable, but her body language spoke volumes. She was clearly confused, apprehensive, and looking greatly like a young girl being called into the principals office. She had no idea, could have no idea, that the mighty Captain America felt exactly the same way. He stood up and put down his mug without thinking, not realizing that it had been his mother who taught him it was not polite to be sitting while someone entered the room. In the military, the same had been true for superior officers, and it had been a reflex that he could not shake.

"Hello, Angelica." Cap said softly as Firestar walked in front of the fireplace. "I'm really glad to see you."

"I'm surprised that no one else has come to see you yet." Angel said somewhat cryptically. "I tried to convince Vance… but…"

"I know how angry he is." Cap said as he walked over to stand next to her by the fireplace "I hope to speak to him in time, but maybe this isn't the time."

Angel wrapped her arms around herself, looking like she was holding something in. Cap braced himself, waiting for the young redhead to lash out at him. He had it coming to him, after all.

"Oh, to hell with it." Angel said, throwing her arms around him and planting a wet kiss on his cheek. "I'm so glad to see you too.

Steve's eyes widened to the size of platters, and for the first time all day he was totally caught off guard. He felt his own arms wrap around Angel and she hugged him tighter, as if it was a contest. Steve was totally speechless.

"I don't know how anybody can stay mad at you." Angel laughed into his ear "I was angry too, but then you resigned from the Avengers… then I didn't know what to think. When I put myself In your position… I realized that I wouldn't have switched places with you for the world. I was so proud to be an Avenger, but I can only imagine how hard it was for you to walk away from them. I saw what happened to the SHIELD Headquarters on TV, and I when they said that you were aboard I was so afraid that I wouldn't get a chance to tell you any of this." Angel was gushing, but just as suddenly clammed up.

Steve gently pushed her out to arms length and looked into her eyes his hands were still on her shoulders and hers were still at his waist. To an outside observer it would have looked like they were trying to figure out the first step of an elaborate dance.

"I know how I've been doing. I'm more concerned with all of you." Cap said with concern.

"Oh… it's been an adjustment. This school is filled with all kinds. Some of them are old friends, but some of them are old enemies. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't want to burn Emma into a pile of ash, but Rogue is a lot of fun to hang out with. I love working with the kids, letting them know some of the things I had to learn the hard way. We all do that now. You have to take the good with the bad." Firestar said, not drawing away from him.

"I'm so sorry for everything that happened. That's all that I want to say to everyone."

"Only a few people are still mad out you, but Wanda…" Angel began and then sighed "She doesn't want to see you because she is embarrassed."

"About what she said to the newspaper."

Angel looked stricken, as if she had said too much.

"Where is everybody else?" Steve asked, letting her off the hook.

"Most of them are teaching class. I only give clinics on safe flying to the kids who can fly. That means that most of my schedule is free to work on my college coursework… but… well… I skipped out on it when I heard that you were here."

"I really appreciate it, but you know that you can't neglect your studies on my account. It is your future after all." Steve said with concern.

Angel held a hand demurely over her mouth as she laughed "How did I know that you were going to say that? You're worse than my dad."

"I'm old enough to be your grandfather." Steve said as he scratched his head "That might be why."

"My GREAT grandpa fought in the big one." Angel revealed.

Steve just sighed at the revelation, wondering how he could possibly feel any older.

The door blew open and a whistling noise filled the room seconds before Angel's shriek did. Captain America flew across the room with a tremendous smacking noise, colliding with the wall of the den and sliding down to the floor. Before even his superior reaction time could tell him what happened he felt several things happen at once. A fist collided with his face, a foot with his ribs, and another hard shot to the kidney. This was all entirely too familiar, and at the same time uncharacteristically brutal.

"Well isn't this a romantic little scene?" The son of Magneto spat.

"Pietro! What do you think you're doing!" Angel screamed angrily at Quicksilver, her eyes glowing with energy approximating her rage as Captain America quickly got back to his feet.

"Shut up! I went through this little scene enough with my sister to know all about how this man mentors the young women under his tutelage! Don't waste my time with your worthless protests!" Quicksilver yelled as he punched Cap again, the force of the blow tumbling him over the sofa.

"Pietro." Cap groaned as he once again forced himself to his feet "You better have a good explanation…"

Quicksilver's super fast punch collided with his jaw again, but with insufficient strength to stun the super soldier now that he knew it was coming. He rolled back with the punch and popped back up like one of those inflatable punch-em dolls kids used to get for Christmas. He rose to his full height and stared into the imperious, infuriated features of the super-fast mutant.

"It seems like you are getting slow in your old age, teacher." Quicksilver spat, hatred and venom hanging on that last word.

"Pietro…"

"Shut up!" Quicksilver swung again, but Steve Rogers had already raised the portfolio case he had picked up from the ground, enjoying the sound of flesh hitting the metal on the other side of the leather.

"ARRRGGGHHH!" Quicksilver snarled in pain "Not again!"

"Teacher…" Captain America began, pointing to himself "Student." He finished, pushing Quicksilver down to the ground.

"Not one of your better ones, it looks like." Angel commented, the glow of her eyes subsiding.

"On the contrary." Cap said, offering the fallen mutant a hand "He's one of the ones I'm most proud of."

Quicksilver looked at the offered hand like it was a turd with burnt hair on it.

"What is this damn racket!" A familiar voice hollered as the blue-furred Beast bounded into the room "You're disturbing my… class… next… door."

Hank McCoy looked totally gobsmacked to see the scene before him; a fuming Quicksilver laying on the ground and a bruised Captain America standing next to a dent in the plaster and an overturned sofa. Angel just shrugged when he looked at her.

"Why can't this place just… be a school?" Hank sighed.

* * *

Storm brought some more hot chocolate.

Steve, Hank, Angel, and Pietro had been put under arrest and forced to stay in this room until the next class period was over. Storm had taken over Hank's class when he tried to use that as an excuse to weasel out of it. It wasn't so hard to bear as long as the hot chocolate kept on coming. They had a lot to talk over and at least now they had plenty of time to do it. It still felt like detention and Hank had muttered something about a breakfast club that Steve didn't understand. Things had gotten a lot calmer, even though Pietro was still glowering as he held an ice pack over his fist. Hank had looked it over and insisted that it was nothing serious. Just a deep bruise. To his pride. Pietro was fuming more about the diagnosis than anything else.

"I suppose that I… overreacted." Quicksilver finally admitted.

"That is big of you to admit, Pietro." Hank said in his typically erudite way, playing the role of the mediator "Captain?"

"Perhaps I was a little overzealous myself. I was very glad to see Angelica again but I should have known better. I know how it must have looked like when you came through the door."

"That was all my fault! He didn't do anything!" Angel interrupted.

"Just so that there is no misunderstanding, I was going to punch you anyway." Pietro insisted "I… wasn't planning on kicking you, though, until I saw the two of you together."

"I'm sorry." Both of them said. Angel said "Jinx" and insisted that Cap owed her a Coke. Cap didn't argue even though he had no idea what she was talking about.

Then the Beast put his two cents in.

"If I was to offer a piece of constructive criticism, perhaps you should be more culturally aware of the intricacies of intergender relations with regard to the currant socio-political climate. The sensitivities of the time coupled with the aftermath of the sexual revolution have made affectionate physical contact of any kind between adults within a working or scholastic relationship somewhat of a point of contention. Whereas in your period in history it was better understood that the impossibility of such relationships would preclude them and such affection would not construe them, in the current age where such relationships happen illicitly with greater regularity more caution is warranted. Although we think ourselves to be in a free culture compared to the 1940's in actuality confusion of gender roles and their connection to relationships have led to scandals, heartbreak, sexual harassment lawsuits, and such severe misunderstandings." Hank McCoy lectured them.

"What are you saying, Hank?" Steve asked for clarification, hoping that he would sum it up this time.

"He's saying that Warren is tagging Paige and everybody is a little wigged out about it." Firestar said, trying not to laugh.

"Tagging? Wigged?" Cap asked, more confused by Angel's summery than Hank's lecture.

"The Angel is sleeping with Husk and almost nobody is pleased with the turn of events." Quicksilver translated bitterly "I am no exception."

"So here you plop down, in the middle of a soap opera, like some unexpected guest star." Angel shrugged.

"I can see the problem." Cap said "I was actually planning on talking to the Angel and thank him for saving my life. Maybe there is another reason that I should speak with him."

"You are the last person that should be lecturing Warren." Quicksilver griped.

"What are you trying to say, Pietro. There is something that is bothering you or you wouldn't be talking with your fists. I want to know what that is." Steve challenged him.

"I want to know what's going on with you and my sister. I want to know how long it has been going on." Quicksilver's eyes were like ice as he said the words.

"Nothing is…"

"Stop lying to me! I'm not a teenager anymore and I don't need you patronizing me!" Quicksilver leapt to his feet, throwing the icepack.

"Pietro!" The Beast growled, pushing him back to a sitting position "You talk, then he talks. He listens, then you listen. That is how this works. Histrionics are counterproductive to resolution of these issues."

"Don't talk to me like I'm a child, McCoy." Quicksilver warned him.

"You should stop acting like one!" Beast growled.

"I know that Cap is telling the truth." Angel defended him "He's never been anything but professional to me. When I was on the team he was always professional with Wanda too."

"Pietro… we go back a long way. I know that you had your suspicions during the early days, but you have to believe me when I tell you that nothing happened between me and Wanda." Cap assured him.

"What do you know, you clueless bastard?" Quicksilver snapped "Do you know how many times I had to comfort her? How many times she came to my room crying because of you?"

"What do you mean?" Cap was truly confused.

"My sister was… deeply infatuated with you, Captain. You would have to have been blind not to see it. I saw it, and it drove me mad."

* * *

Every part of Pietro Maximoff's body hurt.

The beating that he had taken at the hands of the Masters of Evil had been brutal. He wondered sometimes why he had ever agreed to be an Avenger. He had taken some thumpings at the hands of the X-men while he was a member of the Brotherhood, but this felt as if he could still feel the fists beating his flesh. He got up and looked in the mirror, counting the purple splotches all over his body. He was bruised like a grape. His green costume, with its single silver streak, still lay crumpled in the corner. Even in these miserable circumstances he still was surprised by how more miserable he felt. It was only then that he realized that something had to be wrong with Wanda. Ever since birth they had shared a kind of empathy that neither one of them liked to talk about. One that other people didn't understand.

He was dressed and at her room in a flash, and he could hear her sobbing though the door. Pietro's temper was as quick as his feet, and no matter what had caused Wanda to cry he was already angry at it. He burst into the room, unheeding a privacy that they had never had from each other. When they were growing up in a traveling caravan of gypsy performers they had shared very cramped quarters and familiar living conditions. Seeing each other naked was nothing new, nor cause for inappropriate lust. In an extended family that didn't talk to their children much about issues of sex, seeing the changes in his and Wanda's bodies as they matured was the only way he had of figuring out about such things. They had no secrets from one another. They kept separate quarters in the mansion more for the comfort of the others than for themselves. He knew that the other Avengers didn't understand the closeness of family, because they were Americans and that was a part of their decadent culture.

"Pietro." Wanda sobbed miserably. "I didn't want you to see me like this."

The Scarlet Witch's eyes were red and puffy. She had been crying terribly and for a long time. Pietro's fists clenched with rage, but there was nothing to punch so he just as swiftly relaxed them. He did not want his rage to frighten Wanda. He knew that at times it had done just that.

"What is it, Wanda?" he asked "What's wrong?"

"I can't tell you. I'm sorry." She said as he sat down next to her on her bed and put his arm around her.

"Why?" Pietro said in confusion "We tell each other everything."

"I can't tell you this. It is too humiliating." Wanda insisted, dabbing at her eyes.

"Who humiliated you, sister? Tell me!" Pietro insisted with equal fervor.

"It is just… it is Valentines day." Wanda said "I saw Henry and Janet leaving to have a romantic dinner, and it reminded me that I have no one to share it with."

"So this humiliated you?" Pietro asked in confusion.

"No! It was just the start." Wanda said "I couldn't bear not getting a Valentine, so… I wrote one of my own."

"That is nothing to be ashamed of, Wanda. It this country such a thing is not unusual." Pietro comforted her.

"It isn't that. It is just that I wrote him the letter, and I poured out my heart and soul in it. I couldn't put my name on it, though. I was too afraid. So I wrote that it was from a secret admirer. I put it where he could find it, and made sure that I was there when he opened it." She was really sobbing now.

"What is wrong? Did he figure out it was you? What did he say?" Pietro was barely reigning in his fury, not only from his overprotective nature but also from his deeply denied jealousy.

"I asked… I asked him who it was from… and he said… it must be… from…" The rest of the sentence turned to inarticulate sobs as she plunged her face into her lap.

"What did he say?" Pietro said, pulling her back to a sitting position.

"It was from… Sharon. He said it had to be from Sharon." Wanda choked out.

Pietro didn't know how to feel. A part of him was relieved but most of him was infuriated. He had known that the man was low, but this was a new low. He never stopped his constant flirtations… not even in the heat of battle. Pietro didn't think that he was good enough for his sister, but all the while he was running around with another woman while playing with Wanda's emotions. It was too much to bear, and he saw red.

"That two bit carnival barker is going to pay for this!" Pietro said, clutching his fists while he sprung to his feet and unconsciously striking a pose very much like the one Magneto used to make while he was raging about their latest defeat "I swear to you that Hawkeye won't get away with this!"

"No! You mustn't!" She sniffled.

"I'm going to push him off of…" Pietro fumed.

"It wasn't Clint!" She admitted to him, temporarily distracting him from his rage.

"Who else could it be? Jarvis?" Pietro scoffed, thinking that she was lying to save the Archer's sorry hide.

"It was Captain America." She said in a low voice, full of shame.

Pietro could have been knocked over by a stiff breeze. His teacher. The man that he trusted. The one who's words had convinced him that he could overcome his history with the Brotherhood, even Mutant prejudice itself, if he only did the right thing. The admiration that he felt for the man was obviously shared by Wanda, but had become something stronger. That frightened him more than anything. In his mind he saw the Captain taking his sister away from him with that knowing smile on his face. Pietro Maximoff snapped, and did one thing that he regretted for the rest of his life.

"How could you be so stupid!" Pietro shouted "How could you do that? Did you really think… what were you thinking? He is our leader… our teacher… He's like a FATHER to me!"

Wanda rocked back on her bed with her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide with terror and surprise as the brother she loved screamed at her.

"Pietro!" She whined.

"Shut up!" Quicksilver yelled "Did you think that the two of you could really ever be more than you are? Don't you know him at all?"

"Don't talk to me like that, Pietro." Wanda sobbed.

"He's old enough to be our grandfather, Wanda!" Pietro kept pressing.

"Get out!" Wanda shouted.

"What? Wanda…"

"I said get out!" Wanda screamed, lashing out with her hand.

Suddenly it was as if all the air in one side of the room pushed into the other side, and as Pietro's arms cartwheeled wildly he was pushed toward the door. His mouth gaped open in surprise as he tumbled out of it. Wanda had never used her powers on him before. They were too unpredictable. She could have killed him. The door slammed violently behind him, cracking the doorjamb. Pietro could only look at the door, stunned, for several minutes afterward. He could still hear her sobbing within, but he did not have the courage to go back through that door. It was then that the regret at what he said settled in. A regret that has never left.

* * *

"Our relationship was never the same after that. She still came to me, and she still cried, but never again confided in me. Every time I saw the two of you together… every time I saw the way that you looked at each other… I was filled with rage. She began keeping secrets from me. She began sneaking around. By the time the Vision arrived on the team she kept her… courtship with him from me. I know that I was not the most understanding of brothers during that time, but I cannot help but track all of these problems that have plagued my sister back to that one single event. Don't you understand? I could have protected her from all of the troubles that have plagued her over the years if she would have let me. But things were never the same." Quicksilver lamented.

"You know that I wouldn't lie to you, Pietro. You have my word of honor that nothing happened between Wanda and me. I never even knew how she felt, and kept my own feelings to myself with as much embarrassment as she felt." Cap confessed.

"So you do have feelings for her!" Angel said with something that sounded oddly like delight. She had been sitting glumly throughout Pietro's story with a glum expression on her face… obviously identifying heavily with Wanda.

Quicksilver scowled and Hank's huge bushy eyebrows almost hit the roof.

"Cap!" The Beast said with surprise "Say it ain't so!"

"She was just a teenager, and I was a full grown man. I was embarrassed about it so I never mentioned it. I've… cared for a lot of women without trying to romance them. Sometimes because it isn't appropriate… sometimes because my duty came first. In Wanda's case both of those applied."

"But as she got older?" Hank pressed him.

"It got harder." Cap admitted. "It helped when she married the Vision. It was much easier to resist once I began looking at her as a married woman."

"But she and the Vision divorced ages ago, and are just starting to get back together." Angel protested.

"None of that changed how I saw her." Cap said.

"Nothing has changed how she saw you." Quicksilver countered "I still have eyes to see and a heart to feel. I know that something has changed between the two of you. During the last Avenger's assembly the two of you were still looking at each other the same way. At the gathering in Washington DC I could tell that something had changed."

"It had." Steve sighed "Shortly after I was released from the hospital we told each other how we felt… the Vision found out… it was a mess."

"She was crushed… totally devastated… more than anybody else by what happened in Washington DC." The Beast informed him in a low voice.

"To be honest, Captain, this is making me angrier at you and not less so." Quicksilver said coldly "You confessed your feelings to my sister… gave her unreasonable hope… and then still did what you did. How could you?"

"I admit that we could have handled it better but I was sure that she was committed to reconciling with the Vision and was as embarrassed about her confession as I was by mine. I didn't want to make either of them uncomfortable by bringing it up again. I had my own personal relationship problems to consider."

"Which were?" Quicksilver grilled him.

"Personal." Cap shot back.

"You're blocking, Captain." Beast said impatiently.

"I've made a good career out of that, haven't I?" Cap shot back "No offense intended, but if I should be discussing this with anyone it should be Wanda."

"I have to agree with that." Firestar piped in.

"It is hard not to." The Beast said "Still, as a physician, I cannot help but be concerned. I have been observing you ever since Washington DC, Cap, and I have to tell you that I am concerned."

"I've been hearing that a lot lately." Cap said.

"Have you ever given any thought to seeing a therapist?" Hank pressed.

"Does Doctor Faustus count?" Cap wisecracked.

"I have known you for a long time, and there is no one that I have seen that has responded better to stress than you. In fact, you seem to thrive in stressful environments. It is only when you are taken out of the arena of combat and battle and placed in a purely emotional situation that I have began to see the cracks. Right now, Cap, you look like you are about to break. It is totally understandable. We all know about the failures against the syndicate, the injuries you received, the dissolution of the Avengers, the Tsunami, and the attack on the Helicarrier. This is more stress than any man should have to bear and even I can tell that there is more that you aren't telling us. It is like you are fighting a war on two fronts; one where you feel comfortable asking for help and another where you refuse all aid. It is this confusion that has had so many of those that are closest to you worried about you. You have been telling a variety of people about your experiences during the war, and if I were to make a diagnosis I would frankly chose post traumatic stress disorder."

"Shell shock?" Cap asked, almost disdainfully.

"We don't call it that, anymore." Beast insisted "The causes and symptoms of combat fatigue are more complex and long lasting than such a simple phrase can describe."

"It's true." Angel said "My cousin was fine for years after the Gulf War and then one day he just totally fell to pieces. It's hard to describe."

Quicksilver snorted "If I was to make an observation, Captain, it seems to me that on the field of battle no man is your equal. On the battlefield of the heart, you seem much more inept. By your own admission, you know exactly what you want. Yet you deliberately keep yourself from it for reasons known only to yourself. I would not have approved of a relationship between you and Wanda, but what stopped you from following your heart in the intervening years while we were estranged? The Vision? Even when he had emotions he was hardly a suitable mate…"

"That isn't for you to judge!" Cap exploded, surprising them all by the force of his voice "Wanda chose him, and they were happy! I had no right! Don't you understand that, Pietro? They were happy together!"

"Yes we were." A hollow voice surprised them all.

The Vision stepped through the fireplace unscathed, his expression as unreadable as always. The dark black pits of his eyes regarded them all, but focused especially on the scowling Mutant with the silver hair.

"You surprise me, Pietro." Vision said.

"Were you eavesdropping on us again, you soulless automaton?" Quicksilver snarled.

"Yes, but I was hardly alone." Vision said as he crossed his arms.

A little muffled "eeep" noise escaped the far wall.

"Come on out, Kitty." The Beast hollered. "Ollie Ollie oxen free!"

A blushing Kitty Pryde walked out of the wall she had been hiding in.

"Anybody else?" Beast almost barked.

BAMF!

"Hello Kurt." Beast said with a strange little wave that was mostly a waggling of fingers.

Nightcrawler was incapable of blushing, but the purplish tone of his face was probably as close as he was going to get.

"I thought that everybody was too busy to talk to me." Steve groaned "No offense, Nightcrawler, but this place is a circus."

"I'm very sorry about this, Captain, but I feel that the others have been slightly overprotective. You have business here that you have been delayed from for too long, and I am here to make sure that you can complete it in short order. I am sure that, in light if recent events, you have pressing business elsewhere."

"Thank you, Vision." Cap said, standing up.

"Please follow me, Captain." The Vision directed him.

"Wait Vision…" Quicksilver tried to protest.

"I think not!" Vision said in an amplified voice, his eyes glowing red with anger.

Quicksilver sneered briefly then sat back down.

Captain America and the Vision walked out of the room together, leaving an uncomfortable collection of individuals to a discussion of their own.

"Did you mean what you said about us, Captain?" Vision inquired as they walked.

"What was that?" Cap asked.

"That you did not feel that you could express your true feelings because they would be injurious to our happiness." Vision clarified.

"That was how I felt." Cap admitted.

"Interesting. Simon said the same thing, once." Vision said, turning to Steve "He also said that he was my brother. Then he took Wanda to bed, and never once regretted it."

"That was a different situation, Vision." Cap protested "Simon and you share the same brain patterns. In many ways he is the same person. You know exactly how much he loves Wanda because you can see it in your own heart."

"That is an illogical statement, Captain." Vision said "I can run several diagnostics to determine the status of my heart, but I am unable to make an ocular assessment."

"I didn't mean in literally, Vision." Cap said "I was only saying that you can tell how much Simon loves her by approximating how much you love her."

"Ah." Vision said "That is entirely more logical."

"But that doesn't matter, because what matters is which one she loves more, and she chose you." Cap said "Not me, and not Simon."

Vision should have been pleased at what the Captain had to say, but there was still something that was bothering him.

"Sometimes decisions are made by the decisions of others, and other times are made by the situations in which we find ourselves." Vision said "That is something that I have learned in my short life."

Captain America found that he could not argue with that sentiment, and they walked together in silence.

* * *

Captain America and the Vision did not walk down that hallway unobserved. Lurking behind them as they walked were Emma Frost and Rogue, who had stepped out of another chamber at just the right time to catch them departing the den. The two of them were so shocked by the sight of Captain America walking down the hallway that they had forgotten what they were arguing about. Both of them had been at odds with the Avenger on more than one occasion, and even in the intervening years little had been done to assuage those hard feelings. Both looked on, with a complex mix of emotions at seeing the man. Both respected him in their way, but like most of those that had faced him in battle they feared him.

Emma Frost, once known as the White Queen of the Hellfire Club, still remembered that night that Captain America single-handedly invaded that sanctuary of mutant criminal activity. The courage required to do that was incalculable, even for those possessed of superhuman powers. He had faced the immortal Black Queen, a foul mutant sorceress known as Selene, and lived to tell the tale. She remembered seeing him in action, a mere human that battled through foes with a skill that shamed Wolverine. A man born for battle, bred for combat, and representative of the peak of human potential that the White Queen had been raised to believe Mutants had easily surpassed. That was not why she feared him. She feared him because, when she had tried to take his mind as she had so many others, she had failed. His damnable iron will was stronger than her own, and had simply… refused to let her control it. It had been the most humbling experience of her life, and the most frightening.

Unlike Emma Frost, Rogue had actually met Captain America in single combat. He had punched her, kicked her, and even head butted her. He had bashed her with his shield and even thrown it at her. On that occasion after the disc hit her it rebounded off of a wall and hit her again. It was not the physical aspect of the man that she feared, though. Ever since she had permanently stolen Carol Danvers' powers she was his physical superior. What she feared was what she had seen in his mind when she absorbed his strength. It had only been an instant, but it marked her forever. It some ways it was the same as when she touched Logan, but in his case the traumatic memories that scarred him so were repressed. Steve Rogers, a part of whom still swam in the pool of her subconscious mind, remembered everything. The flood of memories, images, pain, and trauma that hit her when she touched him had been like a tidal wave. She feared him because every time she looked at him she remembered haunting dreams that she had spent every day since then trying to forget during her waking hours.

Rogue and Emma Frost then looked to each other, and saw from the look on each other's features that - for once in their lives - they had something in common. That might have been the worst thing of all.

* * *

"She is in class right now." The Vision told him as they approached the ornate door "She has been teaching history class. She has always had an interest in history."

Cap sensed a strange double entendre there, but did not have long to dwell on it before he realized that he could hear her voice through the door. It took nothing more than that voice to stir him.

"If the second half of the twentieth century was dominated by the struggle between ideals, such as the well known cold war between the western and eastern bloc countries, the first half was typified by an entirely different struggle. It was a struggle between an old world and a new one. The age of Imperialism giving way to the modern age. It was not too long before the first world war that European heads of state still believed in the divine right of a few well-bred families to rule over humanity."

"I will leave you to speak with her in private." Vision said in a low voice "I believe that we should all speak later."

"Thank you. I'll talk to you later, Vision." Cap whispered before the android drifted away.

Cap smiled at the didactic tone of Wanda's voice, her eastern European accent enunciating every syllable of the English language almost lovingly.

"It directly relates to the school of thought that we oppose today. The aristocratic structure that died its final, gasping breaths with the demise of the Ottoman empire and the Russian czars is what those advocates of mutant superiority would have us revert to. Those with benevolent mutations permitting them greater abilities reigning over those that lack such advantages. The belief that might makes right and that weakness is wrong, or that an authoritarian government is a mark of such strength, would do well to learn from the lessons of history. For in the end it was not the despotism of Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, or Franco that prevailed in the 20th century. It was the ideals of the western nations that, through a painful processes embracing multiculturalism and representative government, prevailed over dictatorships that embraced the old world in favor of the new."

"I couldn't have said it better myself." Captain America said from the back of the classroom.

Wanda had been writing key phrases on the board when Cap quietly entered the room, not wanting to make a noise for fear of missing something that he had to say. The squeaking of the marker that she was using came to an abrupt halt.

"You… did say it." Wanda said with the stunned look of a deer in headlights as she dropped the marker.

"Who's this hoser?" A mean looking little kid with porcupine quills for hair whispered to a little girl with blue skin.

"That's Captain freaking America you douche bag!" A more normal looking boy said, his eyes bulging.

Cap put his hand over his mouth to hide his smile. These kids must have really been a handful for Wanda. He felt a little unfamiliar swell of pride and wry amusement that grandparents must feel when they see their children bedeviled by their grandchildren. He looked at Wanda and she was absolutely beautiful. She was dressed like the teacher that everybody had a crush on in school. Her hair was tied back into a severe bun that only served to show the graceful curve of her neck. She wore a pair of reading glasses for no other purpose other than to tone down her looks, it seemed. She wore a green skirt that ended an inch below her knee but tapered up to a belt that made sure that her hourglass figure was fully visible. Her blouse's top button was open, leaving intriguing possibility further down. He tried not to stare.

Wanda tried to keep her composure for 7 whole seconds before she rushed over to Steve and threw herself at him. His strong arms caught her as she wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his chest. She was all soft breasts and warm curves, pressing against him like she wanted to merge with him. Her perfume hit him like a physical blow, and he smiled despite himself. Cap returned the embrace and was wondering just as much what he should say as he was what she would. All that he knew was that he was happy to see her. Nervous, to be sure, but happy.

_oooooooooohhhhhhhhhh!_ The kids cooed sarcastically as they hugged in the center of the room. One kid even wolf whistled.

"I never thought… I never expected…" She stammered, then looked up with fear I her eyes "You… didn't see the newspaper did you?"

Steve nodded, and she buried her face in his chest again with a mortified yelp.

"Excuse me for a moment, class." Wanda shouted as she pulled Steve toward the door. The kids were all laughing behind them as she slammed the door behind him.

"I'm sorry, Wanda. I didn't mean to cause a scene or be a distraction. I thought that I could just sit in until the end of your class." Steve tried to console her as she buried her face in her hands.

"Sorry… you're sorry…" She said from behind her hands refusing to look at him.

"I have a lot to apologize for, but I thought that would be a good start." Steve said.

"I'm the one who needs to apologize." Wanda said, finally looking up at him with wet eyes "I must have disgraced you so much with what I said in that article."

"They twisted your words." Steve said "They do it all the time. You should see what they do with my quotes."

"I meant it, though, Steve. I meant every word."

* * *

The reporter for the Daily Globe had cornered Wanda on a shopping trip. She was a chipper young lady named Kate, and nobody named Kate could possibly be dangerous, could they? She said that she was doing a story on the recent dissolution of the Avengers and what it meant for American civil liberties. She was sweet, she acted concerned, and she seemed very sympathetic. Wanda agreed to let the young woman buy her lunch and have an off the record conversation about the events in Washington DC. Over the course of the conversation, Wanda agreed to a short interview as well. She liked the woman. Kate had been so good, so very subtle, that Wanda hadn't even noticed how the conversation had switched until it was too late.

"I'd like to ask you a few questions about Captain America. Would you mind that?" She asked sensitively.

"Why?" Wanda asked.

"Well, as you know, he hasn't been seen ever since that day in Washington. A lot of people are concerned and it is very newsworthy to hear what you think of the situation."

"I suppose that would be all right." Wanda acquiesced.

"Captain America resigned from the Avengers in protest of the administration's policies that removed you, among many others, from the team roster. Why do you think he did that?" Kate asked.

"Steve… Captain America deeply cares about all of the Avengers. I confess that I was as surprised as anyone else when I heard that he resigned, but it shouldn't have surprised me. His compassion is without bounds."

"How would you define your relationship with the Captain?" Kate asked as she chewed the eraser on her pencil.

"We are very close. We have been companions for many years and know each other very well. While most people learned his secret identity only recently I have known it almost from the beginning. Unlike some of the others, like Tony, he thought that it was important that the members of the Avengers be honest with each other. It is his honesty that I love most about him." Wanda said, not even noticing how she had slipped up until it was too late. Kate's expression and manner did not change, though, as she pushed on to the next question.

"Are you concerned about the Captain's disappearance?"

"I'm very concerned! There isn't a day that goes by that I don't wish that he would call me. He is one of my oldest friends, and one of my best friends. I'm very angry at what has been done to him."

"How do you feel about him personally?" Kate asked before nibbling at the eraser a little more.

"I thought that you already asked that." Wanda said, a little confused.

"I asked about your relationship, but how do you feel about him? Are you angry at him that he didn't do more to fight the government?"

"No! I love him. He means the world to me and I know that he did everything that he could. Ever since the beginning he would not tolerate any discrimination in the Avengers and it is the government that forced him into that position."

"Does the rumors that have surfaced regarding his relationship with the super criminal known as Diamondback changed your opinion of him?"

"No. I already knew that he had a relationship with Rachel, and that she had reformed. Just as he reformed me and the Black Widow. Captain America never turns his back on anyone. He gave me and my brother the chance that we needed to overcome out criminal background and become heroes. Given enough time Rachel might even have become a hero and joined the Avengers just like I did."

"So did the Captain use the same methods to reform Diamondback as he did for you?"

"Methods?"

"Would you say that he encouraged you to reform by having a close personal relationship with you?" Kate asked.

"Yes." Wanda answered.

"What would this close relationship include?" Kate asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh… for example… has he ever kissed you?" she asked.

"Yes." Wanda said without any hesitation.

"Have you ever had any romantic dinners or drank wine by firelight?" She asked.

"Of course." Wanda said "On occasion."

"Have you ever slept with him? Spent the night with him?"

We all know that, by this time, Wanda Maximoff should have been more than on her guard. That she should have known what all these questions were leading to. But she could not stop herself from answering truthfully even if the truth was not in the spirit of veracity. Because she did not know that Katherine "Kate" Meadows was a mutant. She didn't know that most of the public figures that she had already victimized had put the word on the street never to talk to her except over the phone. For Kate Meadows constantly secreted a pheromone that made her impossible to lie to. It was how she had gotten so far in journalism despite her total lack of tact or reporter instincts. She had already victimized Edwin Jarvis regarding the details of the Vision's confrontation with Captain America. She had found out about that from the repairman who worked on the damage. She had tracked it all the way back to Wanda, and in that moment when the words passed her lips she knew that she had triumphed.

"Yes." Wanda said without any of the negative emotions she would later feel for this woman once her pheromones wore off "I slept with him. But…"

"Are you in love with Captain America, Wanda?" Kate finally said, knowing that her powers had finally taken the woman.

"Yes I am." Wanda said, as if that was obvious.

* * *

"I only found out about her after it was too late, but she didn't have the power to make me say something that wasn't true. Every word was true. I wish that I could tell you something different, Steve." Wanda said.

"You don't have to, Wanda. You already told me how you feel."

"Now I've told the entire world. " She sighed.

"It is nothing to be ashamed of. At least, I hope that your aren't ashamed. We've known each other for so long. We've fought criminals, terrorists, other dimensional beings and wars on alien planets. We've been through so much together how could we ever avoid getting as close as we have. I despair to think what I might have said if this woman cornered me."

"What would you have said?" Wanda asked.

Steve bit his bottom lip. Hard.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to put you on the spot like that." She said.

"We need to be adults about this, Wanda. Responsible ones. There are bigger things happening right now than just the two of us. There is the Vision to consider, but also all of our friends and colleagues."

"I love the Vision." Wanda said.

"I know."

"I love you, too." She said, not looking him in the eyes.

Steve didn't know what to say, but he heard words come out of his mouth anyway.

"There are a lot of different kinds of love in the world. If you only believe in the kind in fairy tales you are bound to be disappointed every time." He heard himself say.

Wanda finally looked him in the eyes.

"You've told me that before. Where did you hear that?" She asked.

Cap closed his eyes for a moment, and his memory arced like lightning bolts through his brain. When it came to the information that he wanted to recall, and he opened his eyes, it was no surprise to him.

"Sara." He breathed "Sara told me that."

Wanda looked down to the ground again, her fist pressed against her mouth.

"I think that I should go." Steve said, his discomfort finally getting the best of him. "I just wanted to clear the air with you. Let you know that you didn't do anything wrong. Let you know how sorry I am that all of this happened."

"No! Not yet please!" Wanda said "This is such an opportunity!"

"How so?"

"How many history teachers ever get the opportunity to introduce their class to a living legend?" Wanda said with an honest smile.

* * *

Captain America faced the staring faces of the kids in the classroom.

There was a variety of kids in the room that was jaw dropping. There were normal looking kids, to be sure, of all nationalities and ethnic groups. Then there were other ones. The porcupine kid. The blue skinned girl. One that looked kind of like a fish. A pair of triplets that reminded him of _Village Of The Damned. _For some reason, Hank Pym had picked that movie as essential to Cap's reeducation once he came out of an icy sleep. Along with _Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Stepford Wives, _and _Night of the Living Dead_ it puzzled him more than enlightened him. Hank sure liked his science fiction, and insisted that it was modern allegory for what was going on in society at the time the film was made. All that aside, those triplets were creepy. There was a beautiful girl with beautiful gossamer wings that was, without a doubt, popular among the boys here. The children were a fascinating mosaic and Cap was almost enthralled just looking at them. The feeling was mutual, he could see in their eyes. These kids had probably heard about him all of their lives and never thought that they would ever see him in the flesh.

"Class." Wanda called them to attention "This is Captain America. I am very proud that he has agreed to talk to us today and answer our questions about his experiences during world war two. This is a unique learning opportunity and I encourage you to take notes."

"Hello, class." Cap said somewhat awkwardly, not knowing for sure if he would insult them by calling them _kids. _It was hard to tell with kids these days.

"Tell the class a little about yourself." Wanda prodded him with a playful poke in the back.

"My name is Steve Rogers. In 1940 I tried to join the Army and was found to be physically unfit for service. I volunteered for a program called Project: Rebirth, that would lead to my being given the super soldier serum. I fought in the second world war, and at the end of the war I fell into suspended animation - which is just fancy talk for being frozen in ice - until I was found by the Avengers." Cap summed things up.

"So you're like, a thousand year old right?" The spike-headed kid griped. The normal looking boy next to him elbowed him roughly.

"Not yet." Steve said with a half smile.

"Be polite, Calvin." Scarlet Witch admonished the boy.

Three visitors crept into the back of the room. It was Kitty Pryde, Vance Astrovik, and surprisingly enough Colossus. Cap had heard that the big Russian was dead, but tried not to show any reaction to their entry that would draw undue attention to them. He didn't want to distract the children any more than he already had. The mutant known as Justice looked like he was chewing on something that he really disliked but didn't want to swallow it. Kitty whispered something in his ear and he just nodded curtly. Cap turned his attention onto the children and finally thought of something to say.

"I hear from Wanda that you kids have been studying the war." Cap said.

"Wanda?" The blue skinned girl asked.

"He means Ms Maximoff." A red headed boy said.

"Which war?" one of the weird triplets asked dreamily "There have been so many."

"Sorry. In my day we just called it 'the war.' The one that my father fought in we called 'the great war' even though there was hardly anything great about it. These days historians call them World War I and World War II, but that always sounded kind of ridiculous to me. Like a movie sequel." Cap rambled a little nervous and speaking off the cuff "Anyway, what questions do you kids have for me?"

A pretty, normal looking girl with blonde hair raised her hand and Cap gestured to her with all four fingers. Kind of like a karate chop. His mother had always told him that it was impolite to point. Maybe that why he never liked those Uncle Sam posters.

"This is Kelsey. What's your question, Kelsey?" Wanda asked.

"This isn't about the war… but I was just wondering what your powers were." Kelsey said shyly.

"I don't have any." Cap said without any recrimination.

"But you said that they made you a super soldier." She said in a squeaky voice "I've read about you, and you've beaten all sorts of tough bad guys. How you do you do it without any powers?"

A few of the kids laughed, but a few of them were looking at him with honest confusion.

"The experiment improved my body to the peak of human condition, but it was unable to make me anything more than human. If you don't mind me asking, I'm more interested in what you can do, Kelsey." Cap said, not feeling bad at all to get away from the subject of the war. Maybe if he could build a bridge of trust to these kids this all wouldn't be so awkward.

"Oh, its so stupid." Kelsey said, actually blushing.

"Don't feel that way. You were given a gift or your wouldn't be here. Whatever it is it is more than what I can do." He said.

"I can't control it." She said "Its dangerous. It will hurt people if I'm not careful."

The red headed boy snorted at that.

"It can!" She protested.

"You can tell him." Wanda said to Kelsey "He understands. He's the one who trained me how to control my own powers."

"I can't really explain. She said, looking around embarrassed at her classmates "You won't mind if I show you? You won't be afraid like my parents were?"

"I'm Captain America." Steve said "If you can scare me I should just hang up my uniform and get a job at the shopping mall."

Kelsey smiled at that.

"Okay. Here goes." She said, and Cap noticed that her classmates were all moving away.

She closed her eyes and it suddenly seemed like she was sweating profusely. He water ran and dripped out of every pore in her body. Then the water that was running out of her started trickling upward, against the law of gravity. Little clear spirals of water swirled upward from her body and formed a cloud of moisture. Within seconds the water was coming back down in a miniature rain storm. The other kids started laughing, though, and she lost her concentration. The water burst outward and fell on top of her all at once like a bucket full of water. Then the kids really started laughing.

"The sprinkler strikes again!" The spiky haired kid laughed, and Kelsey sniffled.

"Hush." Wanda said fiercely "You did fine, Kelsey. Maybe this just wasn't the best time to try and use your aquakinesis."

Cap bent down to one knee and put his hand over hers, when she looked up with embarrassed tears in her eyes he just smiled at her. It was such a warm and honest smile that she couldn't help but smile back.

"You're afraid to use your powers… because they work on the water in other people's bodies, too." Cap said.

Kelsey nodded.

"Don't worry so much." Cap said, lifting her chin with his finger "You're I the right place to learn, and in time you'll learn to control this gift that was given to you. Maybe even be an X-man, if you want."

"The Sprinkler an X-man!" The redheaded boy laughed "That'll be the day."

"Stop teasing her, Greg!" The gossamer winged girl yelled at him.

"Oh, don't worry about these boys, either." Cap said, stretching to his full height and towering over the laughing boys. "In a couple years you'll develop another power that even they won't be able to resist. Then you'll get the last laugh."

Even the three observers in the back laughed at that. Cap saw a smile on Kelsey's face as she absorbed all the water back into her. That made it all worth it.

"Does anybody have any other questions?" Cap asked.

"Are you married?" One of the spooky triplets asked.

Cap looked at her with amusement, hoping that this strange little girl wasn't already developing a crush on him "No, I'm afraid my career as a crime fighter has kept me from ever starting a family. Any other questions?"

"Did you ever kill any Germans?" The spiky haired kid asked "Cut 'em up just like _Bloodrayne?"_

"Calvin!" Wanda said "You've been acting up all day! Do you want detention?"

The kid seemed to get really small, and that told Cap more that anything that Wanda wasn't the best teacher to get detention with.

"No ma'am." He muttered.

"You don't have to answer that, Steve." Wanda said.

"Young man, have you ever had any family in the service?" Cap asked.

"Just my stupid grandpa in the stupid Navy." Calvin said.

"I've got a question for you." Vance said from the back of the classroom "Why don't you tell these kids about the holocaust? Being there and all, you should know better than anyone."

Cap saw Kitty Pryde slap her hand over her mouth and he heard Wanda gasp a moment before her arm shot up. Cap's superior reflexes saved Justice from something unpleasant happening to him as his own hand shot out to grab Wanda's before she could gesture at him and unleash her unpredictable power. She was not inclined to use her powers out of anger, so Cap knew that what he had just said touched a very deep nerve.

"Hello, Vance." Cap said evenly, trying to make it look like she was holding Wanda's hand in a friendly manner instead of restraining her from committing violence.

"Why don't you tell them, Cap? Don't you think that these kids deserve to know what humanity is capable of?" Vance asked in an accusatory tone. Kitty looked mortified and Colossus looked at Cap with an expression that seemed to be asking permission to bust Justice's ass.

"That isn't a bad idea at all, Vance. " Cap said sadly. "Maybe not the best place to start… but certainly something that shouldn't be forgotten."

Cap turned his back on the class and walked up to the dry-erase board. It wasn't remotely like the blackboards and chalk his own teachers used. Back when the word was more simple. He picked up a red marker, which he thought would be the most appropriate, and drew a six on the board. He paused, and then drew a zero. Then another, and another, and another, and another until six zeroes stretched out across the length of the board. Then he but the marker down and turned around. The kids were looking at him with confusion, but Wanda looked almost fearful. Steve sighed, and knew what he had to say.

"Between 1937 and 1945 Six million Jewish civilians from throughout Europe were exterminated by Hitler's Third Reich. They were taken out of their homes, arrested, relocated to ghettos and prison camps where they were brutalized. They were forced into slavery at hard labor camps. When they were so weak from starvation that they could not work anymore they were sent to the gas chambers and their bodies cremated. For no other crime than having been born different. There are people that, to this day, refuse to acknowledge that the holocaust ever happened. I cannot deny it, because I saw it with my own eyes."

* * *

April 12th, 1945

This was supposed to be the time of triumph.

January had marked the German defeat in the Battle of the Bulge. The "Big Red One" of the 1st Army and the "Rock of the Marne" of the 3rd Army had linked up after a month long separation and continued the press eastward. The last German offensive of the war had sputtered in Hungary. The allies established the bridge at Remigen, and began to race the Soviets to Berlin. Uncle Adolph and his dreams of a master race were finished. All that was left was to stick a fork in them. This was supposed to be the time of victory. The time that they had all waited so long for and fought so hard to attain. It would have been that way, too, if it had not been for a speed bump named Buchenwald. The place where the veil was finally ripped from the deepest secrets of the Third Reich.

How do you define horror? Authors and artists throughout history have done their best to answer this question. Edgar Allen Poe, Carravaggio, H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King… all have had their different ways to define horror. Steven Grant Rogers had never needed them to define it for him, because he had experienced it so deeply that it would never leave him. Bataan, North Africa, Italy, Normandy, the Hedgerows, and even Bastogne had not prepared him for what awaited him on the other side of those iron gates. He had arrived here with the 3rd Army, and remembered that only hours ago he was chatting with a sawed-off runt named Audie Murphy who had never known that he was the perfect soldier until he was unleashed on the field of battle. A triumph on two legs in the middle of an endless horror show. Murphy, as great a soldier as he may have been, was the farthest thing from his mind now. As he walked through those gates, with that damnable German phrase emblazoned on them, he knew that those words would forever be what defined horror for him.

The phrase had a double meaning, and could have either meant _"To each his own" _or _"Everyone gets what they deserve."_

Captain America walked into a nightmare, both wishing that Bucky was at his side and relieved that he had left the young man at the 3rd Infantry's base camp. He had been wounded by some shrapnel and the wound had gotten infected, but the doctors insisted that he was going to be fine. He just hoped that General Patton didn't get it in his mind to slap him like he had another soldier who was suffering from shell shock. Bucky just might slap him back. It would not surprise Steve one bit, because the spunky young teen had grown into a proud young man who would never permit a slap in the face. A young man that he was glad did not have to see what lay behind these walls.

In the corner was a soldier vomiting, either from something that he had seen or just the unbearable stench of this place. Another soldier had gotten his hands on an SS prison guard and was brutally beating him with the butt of his rifle. The man lay limp and still on the cold cement floor, shuddering only as each blow of the blood soaked rifle landed. The soldier was on his knees, panting, his eyes wild and his lips spewing indecipherable curses that only he could understand. Cap pulled the rifle away from the soldier and put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but the young man only looked up to him with confusion. Looking down at the dying German and the blood on his hands and uniform. Looking up to Cap. Looking through him at something that only he could see.

Outside this building was a barbed wire enclosure that had, at one time, been filled to the brim with prisoners. Now it was home to only about 60 prison guards, surrounded by barbed wire and American soldiers for their own protection. Protection from 21,000 people who were too weak from starvation and disease to wipe their own asses. A Captain had pulled a high ranking guard out of the woods around the camp and put a pistol to his head. Before Cap could stop it there was a sound like a boxer hitting a heavy bag and a cone-shaped pink spray bursting from the German officer's forehead. He had done it right in front of the prisoners that they had come to liberate, but the pathetic wrecks of human beings had not whooped or cheered. They had just looked at it as if it was something that they saw every day. Others that had been pulled out of the woods had been thrown to the prisoners, to do with as they would.

Cap had walked away from that, stunned by the legions of walking skeletons with undead eyes. Stunned more when they had told them that they were the "privileged" Communist political prisoners. The Jews had been sent to Auschwitz, on a one way rail trip from which there was no return. All but a few, and those were the ones that Captain America was going to find. He walked past the carts, trying not to look at their contents. His eyes blurred with tears as he made them out. Mine carts filled with human teeth extracted for their fillings. A cart filled with nothing but eyeglasses and wedding rings. Piles of human hair the size of hay bales. He walked past the crematoriums that still smelled of charred human flesh and saw piles of human bones stacked to the ceiling. He walked through the killing rooms with hooks on the wall like a slaughterhouse. Through laboratories filled with bloody tables and body parts floating in jars of formaldehyde. He wandered into the commandant's office and turned on a lamp. He stood in speechless horror, looking at the portraits on the wall. For they were not portraits at all, but tattoos razor-bladed from human bodies and cured like leather. When he realized that the lampshade was made of the same material he could taste the vomit rising in his throat.

With his fist pressed to his mouth, holding his gorge down, he walked past the rows and rows of "beds" that looked more like chicken coops. The living quarters smelled of piss, shit, and that indescribable smell of fear. The medical corps had already evacuated the worst cases found here to a field medical tent on the other side of the base. Not far from the empty tent-ghetto where the Jews had lived before they were forcibly evacuated in cattle cars. Those that had not survived the evacuation were piled in donkey carts like cordwood, a black cloud of flies swarming around them. Captain America stopped in the middle of this room and he closed his eyes. He listened as well as he could, as if he could hear all the voices of the countless ones who had perished here. Jews, Gypsies, Communists, Homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and anyone else that did not toe the line of the Thousand Year Reich. Anyone who wasn't with the program. He felt a weight greater than any weight he had ever felt in his life press down on him, but he continued on. Every step felt like his feet was made of cement, but there was nothing that he could do but bear the burden. He had a mission, and he couldn't fail.

He came to the munitions factory, where the remaining Jews had slaved away their days up until the day of liberation. They were outside the plant, milling about as soldiers watched them with stunned eyes. Every worker in the factory had been a child. Little boys and little girls who could not be told apart because their hair had been shaved off and their little bodies starved into pathetic androgyny. When they saw who was coming all of their eyes got so wide he feared that they would burst out of their heads, and they ambled toward him with their arms held forward like an army of zombies in a George Romero movie. But Captain America was not afraid. He fell to his knees in front of them and they swarmed around him. Every one of them wanted to embrace their savior, and he was going to hug each and every one of them. Tears soaked his mask beneath the eye holes as he saw their tears. Tears that they had not been allowed to shed. Some of them were as young as 5 years old, and had known nothing of life except this hell. Captain America had come, and he had brought them hope.

He could not undo what was done, and could do nothing for the ones who had been taken away. He was not a god. He was just a man who did the best he could, in as many ways as he could, for as long as he could. The Nazis had only kept these children alive because they had small hands. Small hands that could install delicate components. Small hands that could get into tiny crevices. Little hands that could make big bombs. The only reason that their little bodies were not piled in a donkey cart was because the Nazis had a use for them. These men that they had defeated here today were nothing if not efficient. A little girl told him about how she had made sure that the bombs would not explode, and he remembered a night in Bastogne where a dud had landed right next to him. At that moment, he realized something very important. Something he would never forget. He had not saved this little girl. The little girl had been the one who saved him. Her name was Elise, and her face was forever burned in his mind.

"Cap! Cap! An overeager soldier interrupted him.

"Leave it be, soldier. Can't you see what's going on here?" Cap said sternly as he dragged the soldier away from the children.

"I've got to talk to you, Cap!" The buck private said, looking absolutely shaken "I've got news… horrible news…"

"What could be more horrible than what is all around us?" Cap snarled, not meaning to but unable to stop himself.

"It's the President…" The Soldier whispered, then choked.

"What is it, soldier?"

"The President is dead." The soldier said "We just got in on the wire… President Roosevelt is dead. He died in his sleep."

Captain America stood silent for a moment, then looked up to a sky as gray and unforgiving as the walls of this hell on earth. The world suddenly seemed so immense to him, and he so much a small part of it. To the east was an enemy that he wanted more than ever to destroy, but it felt to him as if this was it. This was where he stopped. This was where he got off this entire nightmarish carnival ride. This was the end of Captain America's crusade. Of course, that was nothing more than wishful thinking. He still had a job to do, and a job that was his until death claimed him. His eyes were still wet with tears that he had shed for all these victims that he had seen today, and he had no more tears left for the man that he had idolized since he was 12 years old.

That, as much as than anything he saw that day, tore Steve Rogers apart.

* * *

"There were so many terrible things that happened during the war." Steve said, looking to the wide eyed expressions of the young mutants who were listening intently to his story. "Of all the terrible things, that had to be the worst. Because, you see, we did not liberate Buchenwald. As fast as we raced across Europe, freeing as many people as we could, we were not nearly quick enough. We got to Buchenwald and Belsin too late. The prisoners had overthrown their captors, refusing to spend one more day under their tyranny. Even before that they had resisted them every step of the way in what little ways they could. From the conspirators that planned the revolt in the camp to the little children that disabled the bombs that were being dropped on the allied troops. Even in the darkest hell imaginable they never gave up hope. Even though they were prisoners they would never allow themselves to be victims."

Cap looked to the back, Where Vance Astrovik had lost some of the sharpness of his glare, trading it for a glassy eyed stare of disbelief.

"So, Vance, to answer your question… that is what humanity is capable of." Steve said.

Vance Astrovik averted his gaze from the intense blue eyes, hoping that they could not see the shame in his own eyes.

"Did you meet Magneto that day?" A little voice came from the back.

"Excuse me?" Cap asked, looking at the fish faced boy who had asked so nervously.

"Magneto was in the death camps. Was he one of the children you rescued?"

Cap looked around the room, measuring his response. The daughter of Magneto beside him, two Jewish mutants at the rear of the room standing next to a Russian. This would not be an easy question to answer, but he had no choice but to be honest.

"I'm sorry, but I didn't. Magneto wasn't at Buchenwald or Belsin. He was in Auschwitz. Stalin's troops got there before we could, and they massacred as many as they rescued. Magneto was never rescued from Auschwitz. He survived it by pretending to be dead and hiding in a pile of bodies that included his family."

Colossus looked on unhappily, but said nothing.

Wanda put her hand on his shoulder in a friendly way, and that light touch was all that it took. He could feel it deeply within him. It was like a wet, releasing feeling in his bowels. A slippery feeling in the back of his throat. It was that same breathless, voiceless feeling of suffocation that made him flee from Bernie's bedroom that night. The shadows in the room, such as they were, were so much longer then they should have been and instead of a classroom full of x-kids he was in a warren filled to the brim with those skeletal children, all looking at him with those unnaturally adult eyes. He tried to take a deep breath, and everything wavered, told himself that nothing was wrong like he kept telling himself ever since the twin towers took him back to pearl harbor. He needed to get out and take a breath. That's all.

"I'm sorry, Children." He said in a low voice, suddenly not concerned if that was the right thing to tell them. "I've got to go. It has been wonderful talking to you all today."

He tried to say this as normally as possible, then headed for the door.

"Steve…" Wanda pleaded as he started for the door.

"Excuse me, Wanda… I… just need to go." Cap said emotionally.

"Kitty, will you watch the class for me?" Wanda whispered to her as she pursued Steve.

"Sure, Wanda." Kitty agreed.

"Steve!" Wanda called after him as she ran after him down the hallway. She could see that he had one hand over his eyes and wasn't looking at where he was going. She caught up with him and clapped one hand on his shoulder, but the next thing she knew her arm was twisted behind her back and she was in a choke hold. She looked back with terror to see that Steve was just as surprised as she was, and he released her immediately. His eyes were still moist with tears, and she immediately regretted grabbing him like that.

"I'm so sorry, Wanda." Cap said, nervously smoothing the wrinkles out of her blouse. "Just… for a moment there… I was somewhere else."

"I believe it." Wanda gasped, taking a step back.

He looked totally wrecked, and she could suddenly tell that he had not slept in a long period of time. He had been through hell in the last two days and was doing his best to keep on his usual, invincible face. But he had needed to excuse himself from the classroom because the mask was slipping. What she couldn't say was now that had excited her as much as it frightened her. His grabbing her like that reached down to that younger part of herself that used to get hopelessly aroused when he used to instruct her in Judo and Jujitsu. He was usually so controlled that it was a incredible, thrilling surprise when he lost control. He couldn't look her in the eye, but she reached up to gently cradle his face between her hands and made her look at him.

"You need to rest, Steve." She admonished him "You look like you're running on empty."

"I've run on less." He said.

"You were younger then." She teased him.

He only smiled, so odd to see with his bleary eyes.

"Will you stay here tonight?" She asked, her face close to his.

"Here?" He repeated as if he couldn't conceive of it. "With you?"

Wanda smiled impishly "This old place has about a hundred rooms. It wouldn't be so improper, or any kind of imposition."

"I don't think that everyone would agree with you." Cap said, covering one of her hands with his own.

"It isn't a good idea, Wanda." Cap insisted. "I've got to track down the Crimson Cowl. I need to make him pay for all that he's done."

"What you need is rest." she argued. "In the morning, everything will be more clear. I promise you that."

"Are you certain about this? Honestly, Wanda… I… I've got nowhere else to go." Cap said, trying not to sound pathetic.

Wanda smiled at him, because his honesty always seemed to come before his pride. He would never know how endearing that was. She led the weary super soldier to his room, oblivious to the eyes that were watching them both. The Vision drifted between the walls, never taking his pitch black orbs from the two of them. He trusted them as much as he trusted anyone in the world, but that did not mean that he was going to be a fool about things. He had come to know the irrationality of emotion, and if at any time it looked like they were going to cross a line that was the point of no return he would be waiting.

Sometimes, a single action is worth a thousand words.

* * *

"How are we going to tell him?" The Wasp asked as she paced in front of the desk. "We don't have any evidence! Only our suspicions."

Matt Murdock regarded her from behind his desk, flexing and relaxing his fist. He had bruised it pretty badly on the jaw of a very reluctant thug who did not want to divulge the required information. If his fist hurt this much he could only imagine how much that punk's jaw hurt.

"Our suspicions are not enough, but luckily this is not a court of law. My activities inside and outside the law have been severely hampered since my identity was revealed. Even so, I have scraped the very bottom of the barrel. You have been investigating the highest of the high and I've been skimming the pond scum. We've met in the middle and we've covered all the bases. It was the tactic that Captain America knew would work, and he is a very able tactician."

"How can we tell him?" The Wasp asked again "Will he even believe us?"

"It doesn't matter. It is the truth and we owe him the truth." Murdock said "The truth will set him free."

"He has been chasing the Syndicate. He has been chasing the Crimson Cowl, and he doesn't even know who has really been causing all his problems or why. This last bit of evidence clinches it. There can be no doubt, even though there is no chance that any of this would be admissible in court."

In the corner of Matt Murdock's cluttered apartment was a bulletin board and work bench that would impress a crack team of investigators. Pictures of suspects with red x marks drawn through their faces as they were eliminated. Evidence collected from battle sites and informants. All of it was mostly for Janet Van Dyne's benefit because the photographs were almost totally useless to the sightless vigilante. There was only one picture left, and it had been the last one that they had ever expected. As they put up photographs and news clippings of his career, though, it made a great deal more sense. In fact, they had been surprised that they hadn't seen it from the first. It was obvious. A bit of misdirection, like a stage magician making you look at his left hand when his right is the one doing the work.

Janet Van Dyne and Matt Murdock listened to the tape again. The nuances of the voice and heartbeat that Matt Murdock could hear through the tape were lost on Jan, but she believed what Matt had to say. The way that he could separate the truth from lies was more accurate from a polygraph, and the reason why she had come to him in the first place. The man without fear could not be lied to. The Wasp's fame and wealth gave her access to places that few others could hope to ever visit, and the ability to observe the most clandestine conversations unnoticed. A literal and figurative bug. Together they had been an effective and innovative investigative team, and they both knew that they could not be mistaken. No matter how much they wished they were.

"Who would have the motive to do this? Who would benefit from it? Who would have the power to do it? Who would have the connections to do it? Who would have the influence to cover it up?" Daredevil asked Jan rhetorically. "These are the questions that we agreed had to be answered before any accusations were made.

"We've discovered it all except the motive." Jan sighed.

"I know the motive." Daredevil said, running his fingers over the ruined jet pack that had been recovered from the hellicarrier.

"What could it possibly be?" Janet almost pleaded.

"The dish best served cold." Matt said, leaning back in his leather chair "Revenge."

The Wasp shook her head.

"We need to tell the Captain, and we need to tell him soon." Matt said.

"I don't know how we can possibly tell him." The Wasp said once again "How can we tell him that there is no Crimson Cowl?"

**Next: In final battle**

**What have the Wasp and Daredevil uncovered? Where is the architect of Cap's misery? Who will avenge the Avengers? Tune in next week true believers!**


	18. American Dream

**Author's notes:**

**A special thanks goes out to PROPONENTOFEVO, CWslyClgh, Hellion, JenniferJ and Kaprou, all of who one way or another have influenced the direction of this story by contributing their opinions and suggestions. I really appreciate them. Thanks also to other reviewers such as Frofunk, Kaibahumut, DariusFF and others who have dropped me a line to keep me motivated. **

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Chapter 16: American Dream**

Nighttime at the X-mansion was an unusually serene experience for Steve Rogers. He slept in a soft bed, a comfort that he was unaccustomed to. The sheets felt like 500 count Egyptian cotton. The mansion's central heating kept the room at the perfect temperature. The quiet was the biggest difference. Even in the middle of the night at Avengers Mansion the buzz of the city that never sleeps was all around. The medley of honking horns, distant voices, and humming electricity was ever present even behind the mansion's thick walls. But there was no buzz, and no city. The serenity of Westchester was absolute, with all the children tucked in their beds and all of the adults happily bedded down either alone or with the partners of their choice. It was the very picture of relaxing peace.

It was no wonder that Captain America couldn't sleep.

He had slept earlier in the day, when there was still some noise. A soldier learned how easy it was to fall asleep when there was some noise. He had slept through shelling, return artillery, and aircraft taking off next to his tent. It was the quiet times that were the worst. It had taken very little effort for him to fall asleep while the children were still rampaging through the mansion. He had been exiled to the room by the Scarlet Witch and it had taken little effort to fall asleep. He had been suffering from jet lag when he arrived in Seattle. That had been compounded by even more jet lag on the supersonic jet SHIELD used to shuttle him to New York. In the two sleepless days since Rachel had been arrested he had been constantly going, constantly moving, with the only exception being when he had been knocked unconscious by the concussion grenade and incapacitated by carbon monoxide poisoning.

He laid on the bed in his boxer shorts, staring at the ceiling and fighting the flow of memory that had almost incapacitated him when he was in that classroom. The suddenness of it, the way that it had come without any warning, was unacceptable. He had been denying it for too long, shrugging off the people who were worried about him. Now, finally, he was worried. It had happened too many times in the last couple of months. Talking about the experiences that troubled him so much had helped for a time, but now it seemed that the more he talked the worse it became. It was getting too close to the deepest truths that he kept inside. The things that he didn't want anyone to know he knew about his country. For how would they understand his loyalty if he explained what he knew?

The first time that he could remember was shortly after Sept 11th, when his mind had been wrenched back to Pearl Harbor. It had happened a few times after that, most notably when the Interrogator had gotten into his mind. But since that day in the park with Bernie, when he had looked at the statue that was built to commemorate his death, it had been out of control. It had happened on the rooftop when he called the Avengers off from attacking the Syndicate. That had driven him to Bernie in the middle of the night. It had happened again in the taxi after that man from the Republican Party had waved that damn paper in his face. It had afflicted him in the Avengers' locker room while he was agonizing over Bernie lying to him. It nearly cost him his life when Speed Demon clotheslined him and Hyperion crushed him under a SUV. Again in the ICU when he was visiting, Rachel, a depth of despair that drove him to the roof to escape the claustrophobic feeling. It had happened a few time since then, but - if something so innocuous as laying next to Bernie or having Wanda touch him could set it off - how could he not be a liability on the field of battle… where the stress and the stakes were so much higher?

Could Hank be right about him? Was he suffering from post traumatic stress disorder? If he was, he didn't know how to feel about that. In his day such a thing was equated with cowardice, even though medical and psychological experts contended that it had nothing to do with it. Steve rolled over on his side and looked at the moonlight shining in through the window. More serenity. Why was this peace and quiet so difficult for him to accept? It was as if he were in the eye of a storm that simply precipitated a more furious storm on the other side. Under his placid surface raged a maelstrom of emotion. Three women. One of him. A moral imperative that there could only be one form him. It had never been simple or easy to chose who that should be, which was why - for a time - he had kept himself at a distance from all of them. Even his relationship with Sharon, as passionate as it had been at times, had been a way of keeping them at arms length. Every time he got close to any of them he couldn't help but think of Peggy Carter, Sharon's sister, young and beautiful in Paris. What could have happened between them if that explosion had not robbed her of her memory and sent her back to the states? Why did everything beautiful to happen to him have to end?

He made love to Bernie. It had been wonderful, and he thought that they had rekindled the connection between them. He had tried to do the right thing by her, by the standards of his generation, and once again she had refused. The rejection hurt more the second time around, because this time it had been he who proposed. The first time it seemed more fair, because she was the one who asked and it was a woman's prerogative to change her mind. He had never intended what happened with Rachel, but once it had happened he had felt so wonderfully alive and relieved. He still couldn't believe that she had been taken away from him like that. That she would be spending her life in prison. Now this business with Wanda. Old, unfinished business that he had wished would stay buried. He knew that she loved him, and had for a very long time. He had always wanted her so very badly, but he was a man and understood that there was a difference between that kind of desire and love. That was the true reason why he refused to reciprocate her love. He feared, more than anything, that he would hurt her.

"Do you really think that you could do that?" He heard Wanda's voice come from directly behind him.

He had been so lost in thought that he hadn't even heard her open the door. He was even more surprised to find that she was lying in bed behind him, spooning with him in the nightgown she had worn that last night they spent together. For a moment he thought he was dreaming, until he felt her soft warmth and the distinctive spell of her perfume. Her response was so puzzling. Had he been thinking out loud. He looked back at her beautiful face in the moonlight, every muscle on his body pulled into steel tension and he didn't know what to say or what to do.

"Relax." She said, rubbing his shoulders gently. "You shouldn't worry so much. I know that you would never try to hurt me."

"Wanda…" He said.

"Shush." She insisted, rubbing down his muscled arms "You say some of the most beautiful things, but can you let me do the talking for once?"

With surprising strength she pulled him flat on his back and straddled him, hovering over him like an apparition in the moonlight. Her womanhood attained a precarious position atop his manhood and he felt an involuntary gasp escape him. The auburn curls of her hair brushed across his face as she tossed her head. This was nothing like before. Her hands were gentle as her fingertips tracked the trails of old scars that criss-crossed his chest. Her green eyes almost glowed in the dark with the hunger and passion behind them. Suddenly that sense of suffocation was back, just as it had been when she touched him in the classroom. He sucked in a hard breath and held it, hoping that the feeling would pass.

"You are a good man, Steve. Too good for this world. You are constantly helping others and worrying about others and not taking yourself into account at all. Look at all these scars… and these are just the ones on the outside." She started kissing the scars between words "I love you, Steve, and you know how you feel about me. Why don't you just tell me? If you said it, just once, than everything would be all right."

"The Vision…" Steve gasped, letting his breath out as she kissed a trail up his chest.

"The Vision isn't my husband anymore. He doesn't own me. He is still like a child in the world of emotion, and needs time to learn and mature before he will be capable of an adult relationship. You know this, and have known it all along." He noticed that she was moving atop him in unfamiliar motions. Perhaps the motions she learned as a gypsy dancing girl. If he had been a different kind of man he would have realized that she was giving his supine form a lap dance. Between his boxers and her silky nightgown, though, there was very little between them.

"Wanda… stop."

"Do you really want me to, Steve?" Wanda said, almost pouting but not stopping. "After all this time, and all that we've been through?" She pulled down close to him again, close enough for him to feel that she wasn't wearing a bra.

"Please…" Steve gasped, the claustrophobic feeling starting to wane as he felt her lips kissing their way to his ear.

"Don't you believe in happiness?" She whispered in his ear "Don't you believe that, if you have a chance at happiness… then you should take it?"

Something familiar about that phrase resonated in Steve's mind, but he only felt his head nodding in agreement. He closed his eyes, hoping to wake up, but he was saturated with her scent and felt her warm breath on his lips, unbearably close.

"Don't you believe in love?" She asked, breath puffing against his lips.

Again he nodded, his heart threatening to burst from his chest as the gentle rhythm of her body rubbed against him. The palm of her hand pressed to his chest and seemed to feel his heartbeat. Wanda sighed in pleasure at the feeling.

"You have such a good heart." She said as she stroked his chest "A strong heart with love enough for the entire world. Why limit that love to just one lover? You tried with Bernie, but that didn't work out. Do you think that what you did with Rachel was a bad thing? All that you were doing was following your heart. Your good, strong heart."

Her lips finally closed on his, and, as if against his will, he felt his arms reach up to encircle her. The warm press of their lips together was as soft a rose petals but seemed to have some sort of heat between them. Her tongue intruded into his mouth and met his in a way that he had never imagined kissing Wanda would be like. He felt her reaching down to hook her fingers into the elastic band of his boxers and pull them down to his knees. Then he felt her pull up her own nightgown up around her waist. She wasn't wearing any panties. He couldn't believe what was about to happen, and when he tried to interfere with her actions with his hands she just pushed them gently away like they were a naughty child's.

"Tell me that you want me, Steve." She begged him in a sultry whisper as he felt sudden moist warmth tantalizingly close.

"I want you." He heard himself say.

"Tell me that you love me." She pleaded.

"I…" He began, but he swallowed hard.

"Please tell me. I need so much to hear it." She sounded stricken, almost in despair as they drew closer together.

"I love you, Wanda." Cap surrendered, reaching out to pull her to him.

Everything else had been forgotten except the two of them. They were frozen like that for a moment, both seeming to be transfixed by what was happening, and then something erupted in Steve Rogers. It was like a whip cracking in his mind and a pain that… almost didn't seem to be his. Wanda sprung up from him and howled in pain, but it was only then that he realized that it couldn't be Wanda. Wanda couldn't have known or said all that she did. But as his eyes snapped open from their contented closure it was as if unseen hands grabbed Wanda and hurled her across the room. She collided roughly with the wall, cracking the plaster, and slid down like a bug hitting a windshield.

"You bitch. You heartless bitch!" An unfamiliar female voice hissed from the doorway that he had not even realized was open.

Steve looked at the door in confusion and saw a redhead in her pajamas with her short hair writhing around her as if it was alive. Her eyes were glowing with white fury and dark lines under her eyes made them seem all the deeper and more inhuman. He leaped up to try and protect Wanda but he tripped on his own underwear and fell face down on the foot of the bed. He heard his boxers rip with a loud, shredding noise as his knees came apart. It was only then that he saw that it was not Wanda at all. As she got imperiously to her feet he saw a beautiful blonde with a sour expression. A familiar, sour expression.

"White Queen." Steve gasped.

"Emma!" The redhead growled as she stormed into her room "I sensed what you were trying to do from across the mansion! It isn't bad enough that you seduce my father, but the first time he turns his back you do this!"

Emma Frost rubbed the back of her head as she glared at the new arrival, and her lip curled with contempt "If you love your father so much, why did you drop his last name like yesterday's garbage, Grey?"

Cap tried again to right himself but felt an unseen force knock him flat on his back and pin him to the bed. The girl that she had called "Grey" advanced on Emma and the telepath seemed as hopelessly transfixed. They stared each other down like gunfighters in a western, and by the play in their features the seemed to be fighting a battle that only they could see. Then Emma flew back against the wall again and looked dazed.

"Get the hell out of here, bitch, before I throw you out." The young girl snarled, the strange glow in her eyes fading away. Steve felt the force holding him down go away, but still didn't know what to do. Whatever he had thought was happening had been totally turned upside down and he was disoriented.

Emma stormed out, even the swishing of her silk nightgown seeming to sound angry. The door slammed behind her without anyone even touching it. She didn't even look at Cap, who was laying spread eagle with his ripped boxers around his knees. He didn't know the intentions of this girl who had stormed in on this confusing situation, but Cap didn't want to be unprepared. He grabbed his shield from where it sat, propped up against the nightstand, and held it over his groin. If nothing else, it would protect his dignity. He hopped to his face and struck a defensive posture, kicking off the ripped boxers that fell around his ankles. The red headed girl just looked at him and smiled. Without the glow that was coming from her eyes he could barely see her in the darkness.

"Sit down and relax." She said "I'm not like her."

For some reason, Steve believed her. He sat down Indian style with the shield over his groin area. From that position he could very quickly spring to his feet if necessary. He felt very hot, very flushed, and extremely embarrassed. He was trying to push down his anger and his rage at what had happened… what more could have happened. The girl slowly approached his bed and sat down on it without asking. When he saw her features it was like he was seeing a ghost. A young, lovely girl that used to wear a yellow mask. Yet he could also see her father in her, and instantly knew who she was.

"Phoenix?" He asked, believing that was what she called herself during the Secret War.

"I don't call myself that." She said softly, and then smiled again "You're blushing."

Hearing that, Steve only blushed more.

"I never thought that a living legend could be so bashful. I always wanted to meet you. I heard all the stories, the whispers that people said when they thought no one else could overhear. I always wondered if they were true." She said wistfully.

"We have met." Steve insisted, failing to stop blushing.

"That was another me." She said "This is our first meeting as far as I'm concerned."

It made as much sense as anything else in this mansion. Cap released one of the hands that was clutching his shield and extended it to her magnanimously.

"I'm very pleased to meet you…"

"Rachel." She said. "It is an honor to meet you Captain…"

"Steve." Cap interrupted her, not understanding why. It must have been because he was trying not to think of another Rachel.

"Steve." She said, as if she liked the sound of it.

"Maybe we can talk more in the morning." Steve said, hoping to find a way to disentangle himself from another embarrassing situation. He could only imagine the chaos if somebody had heard the ruckus. If he had to bet on a first person to show up, it would be Quicksilver…

"Everybody's asleep." Rachel assured them as if she read his mind "Nobody is going to raise an alarm or anything. Emma is storming back to her room. She is more embarrassed than you, if you can believe it."

"Rachel… I think…"

"I'm staying with you tonight." She said "It's the only way that I can make sure that she doesn't try something else with you."

"I don't think…"

"You think too much. You are hardly giving me time to think." Rachel laughed quietly as she stood up. "Like it or not, Steve, you've got a bodyguard tonight."

The sheets and comforter beneath him pulled out from under him like they were doing the tablecloth trick, and he felt himself flung on his back again before the blankets flung over him. His eyes bugged out as Rachel lay down next to him. She was really going to sleep with him tonight. She was reading his mind and flinging him around like a rag doll just by thinking about it. He did not feel in the least bit safe. Maybe he should have taken his chances with Emma Frost. She lay there on her side with one hand propping up her head. She looked at him as if she was fascinated and he lay rigidly on his back. He clutched his shield over his groin under the covers. He slowly turned his head to regard her and she lifted one eyebrow as if asking if he liked what he was looking at.

"I always heard that you had nerves of steel… but you would make coffee nervous." Rachel laughed sweetly.

"This is hardly what I would call a dignified situation." Cap admitted gruffly "I'm handling it as best I can."

"You aren't very used to being protected, are you?" She asked.

He shook his head.

"Always the one doing the protecting?"

He nodded.

"Well… for as long as you are here at the mansion you and me are going to be inseparable. Considering what I saw in her mind, you are going to need me. Don't be embarrassed. We all need it from time to time."

"If you say so."

She looked at him impishly for a moment.

"Do you mind if I read your mind?" Rachel asked.

"I thought that you already were." Cap responded in surprise.

"Only what you were sending me. Things that you either are about to say or want to say. Sometimes talking to people is like hearing an echo, and other times it is confusing because they don't say what they mean to. I haven't touched your mind yet. Unlike Emma, I would never do that without your permission. I just want to make sure that she didn't do any permanent damage to you. Whatever she did, it took a lot of effort and left her really drained." Rachel said with concern in her voice.

"That… would be fine I guess." Steve said hesitantly.

Rachel smiled "That wasn't what you wanted to say."

"The other response wasn't something polite to say to a lady." Cap admitted.

"Are you sure its all right?" She asked him again.

"Yes." Cap said, bracing himself.

"Okay… here goes. Don't clench up so much. Sheesh…how did Emma ever get in your mind! Whoa. Relax or I'm not going to be able to do this." Rachel said, stress showing on her brow.

Cap sighed as he tried his best to relax and open his mind to her. He told himself again and again that she was a friend and only wanted to help him. She made little coos and gasps as she sorted through his mind that made him uncomfortable. She seemed to be enjoying it too much, but he had to admit that the feeling over her meeting his mind was very pleasant. Too pleasant. Not intrusive at all. The feeling could only be approximated with getting a full body massage… but only in the mind. Some parts would feel good, other parts would ache a little, some parts would be too painful to touch, and others too embarrassing. As Rachel massaged her way through his mind she seemed adept at staying away from the bad parts.

Her eyes snapped open and regarded him with open admiration "You know… you're a very nice guy. I don't think that I've ever met a mind like yours. It doesn't seem like she did any permanent harm."

"That's good to hear." Cap admitted.

Rachel reached up to his forehead and smoothed his ruffled hair to the side he normally parted it to. It was a gentle and overly familiar gesture, but given what they had just experienced somehow it did not seem out of line to Steve. She twirled his forelock around one finger and then released it, the tip of her finger trailing down the bridge of his nose and then poking him in the tip of his nose. He was startled a bit by it, but she only giggled at his look of surprise.

"You gave my dad some good advice." Rachel whispered "Emma used it against you. Threw it back in your face, but it is still good advice."

"Sometimes the worst vice is advice." Cap grumbled.

Rachel laughed.

"Go to sleep, soldier." She ordered.

"You are a very bossy young lady." Cap retorted.

"I get it from my dad. "Rachel shrugged.

"Why are you doing this?" Steve asked.

"Lets just say that I know what it is like to be out of my time… just like you. We need to stick together, and that's all there is to it."

The two of them stared at each other for a while longer, taking the other's measure, and they both slowly drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Emma Frost slammed the door behind her, covering her face with her hands as if they could extinguish the humiliation that burned there. As much as she hated to admit it, she was grateful that the brat had shown up when she did. She had done the thing that she feared most in that room. She had lost control of the situation. When Hank McCoy came to her with the idea of her taking on the Captain as a patient for the post traumatic stress he suspected, she had no idea what that would lead to. She was intrigued with the Captain's mind for her own reasons, remembering her failure to dominate it and its ability to withhold information from her. That was why she had decided not to wait for any scheduled session. She doubted that the Captain would permit that anyway. She had needed to wait until he was asleep, convince him he was awake, and then slowly probe her way into his mind. Once she had found a way into his mind she had been totally unprepared for what she found there.

Emma Frost was, by nature, a very unemotional person. Ever since she was a very young girl she had a gift that most people around her could not comprehend and a select few wanted to exploit. She had learned to fear her own emotions, and very carefully contained them. But when she joined minds with the Captain she made a mistake in not guarding her mind. Telepathy was a two way street, and a path into the mind left a pathway out. An enforced intimacy such as what she and the Captain… Steve… had shared exposed her to the depth of his emotion. To the things that he had experienced. She had not heeded Rogue's warnings about what lay in that mind, and she paid the price. Within minutes she had been saturated with memories and experiences so vivid that she was swamped with feelings of love and desire for the man that she couldn't even explain in human speech. It was overwhelming and all consuming.

She had gotten lost in the moment.

She had reached into his mind, to its very core, to find what he considered the perfect woman. What they all had in common. He wanted, so very deeply, a woman that he could share all the disparate parts of himself with. Bernie, Rachel, Sharon, Wanda… he liked them attractive, outgoing, intelligent, aggressive, passionate, in control, unafraid to make the first move. He not only wanted this, but he needed it. When that entered her mind she had lost all pretense of analysis. She had stopped caring why this was, and only rejoiced in that it was true. Because all of those things described Emma Frost, and it delighted her so deeply that she had lost control of herself. Desire had flowed through her and she had only known one thing at that moment. She knew only that she had to have that man. Take him and make him hers, because looking so deeply into his mind made her see something that she had never seen before in a human mind. The kind of man that she had ached for since she was a teenager. The kind of man you see in your dreams but never meet.

Emma crawled into her bed, hoping that sleep could dull the humiliation. She knew better, though. In the morning she would remember, and the Grey brat would not permit her to make him forget. Her frustration burned her to her soul. She had almost popped blood vessels in her brain like popcorn forcing her way into his mind, but once she was there he had given himself to her willingly. He had wanted it as much as she had, and another few moments he would have completely given himself to her. Would that have been so horrible? Who knows what could have come of it? Maybe, for at least the few moments when they joined in body as well as mind, she would not feel so dreadfully alone as she had all her life. Maybe she could take a dream and make it reality. Now she would never know. The brat would never let her touch him again.

It was infuriating.

* * *

Back in New York city the night belonged to one man.

As the sun had gone retreated beneath the horizon he had felt the surge of power into his muscles. In the early days that surge of power had been like a drug, but in the years since he had gotten used to it. Although it did not any longer have the thrill that it once had, the surge of strength was like any power, talent, or ability. Power only wanted one thing… to be used. Kyle Richmond threw down the stack of papers he had been working on and smiled. He walked over to his closet and opened the combination lock that held the iron door shut. Inside hung no less than twelve costumes that identified him as the Dark Defender known as Nighthawk. He pulled one out at random and began to put it on. It was little more or less than a skin-tight flight suit made out of the same material as an Astronaut's long johns. He pulled on the mask last and looked in the full length mirror to make sure that everything was straight. It was not the kind of costume that you could wear under your street clothes. He strapped on the miniature jet pack that allowed him the power of flight, made sure that his short titanium talons deployed and retracted properly. He checked the infrared lenses in his mask last, and once he verified that everything was in order he pushed the button that would open his retractable office window.

It was time to hunt.

Like the raptor that was his namesake he flew silently through the darkness looking for prey. His prey, as it was every night, was criminal scum. He did not have to stake out a territory like a lot of heroes had to. Daredevil limited himself to the Kitchen and Spider-man stuck to the high-rises most of the time. With his flight speed he could easily criss-cross the entire island, fly across the river to Jersey, and cover all the Burroughs in a single night before returning to his mansion in Long Island. What amazed him more than anything was how infrequently he encountered other heroes patrolling. He knew that they did it, although he was unsure if it was a nightly affair as it was for him. Fighting crime had been the defining experience of Kyle Richmond's adult life, and it was the only thing that made him feel alive anymore.

It was during these times that he was most at peace. He did not need to dwell on his death, or seeming death. He did not need to think about what he had learned during that experience. He did not need to worry about the fact that the woman he loved was too busy to see him. Janet. How had he ever fallen in love with Janet Van Dyne? He had known the reputation of the Winsome Wasp. She had chewed up and spit out better men than him. She was attracted to glamorous, rich men but they very rarely held her interest for long. She had a list of costumed conquests as long as his arm, and he had willingly tacked himself onto that list. Now he, at last, knew how all those women felt all these years. The models, the actresses, and the heiresses that he romanced and discarded as soon as they began to bore him. Now it was Janet that wasn't returning his phone calls and was too busy to make their next date. If it had not been such a miserable situation he would have found it ironic.

His telescopic lenses found his first customer of the night. It was a rapist. His personal favorite. With his thermal imager he observed the big man snatch a Puerto Rican girl wearing a waitress uniform into his van. He could see their body heat through the roof of the van as he tied and gagged her with duct tape. Then the van sped off to where he could do his business undisturbed. He could run, of course, but Nighthawk could fly. Careful not to fly between the van and the moon he easily kept up with the van that had no hope of losing him. When he saw the vehicle was pulling to a halt it took less than a second before he landed on the roof of the van. He spiked the landing like the Olympic level gymnast he was and used his talons to punch a hole in the roof. Partially with his superhuman strength and partially with the thrust of his jet pack he tore the roof off with a single jerk, exposing the shocked man holding the two pieces of the shirt he had just torn open.

"Oh, shit." The guy said a second before Nighthawk's yellow glove closed around his throat and he was jerked out of the car as easily as if he were weightless.

He struggled briefly, but they always did. He snapped open a switchblade, but Kyle grabbed his wrist and gave it a gentle squeeze. Not hard enough to break bone but more than enough to make the guy's hand pop open like he had gotten an electrical shock. He looked into the man's beady eyes, fighting his compulsion to simply rip his head off. Instead he wrapped the man into the cross-face chicken wing and gently choked him unconscious. He bound his hands with plastic zip-ties he kept in his fanny pack and threw him face first onto the pavement before looking down at the terrified girl that he had saved. As usual, she looked just as terrified of him as she had been of the rapist. It didn't help matters when he popped his talons and rolled her over, but once he cut the duct tape holding her hands together she seemed to relax considerably. He would let her pull off her gag herself, because he had learned from experience that giving people a free upper-lip wax with duct tape was not a way to make friends.

He turned his gaze away from the girl as she removed her gag and held her shirt together with one hand. The guy he had choked out still wasn't stirring, but he tried to look interested in him while the girl preserved her dignity. He saw that the man had kept a warm looking blanket in the back of the van and picked it up for her. There was a typical February chill in the air.

_"Gracias… muchos gracias…" _The girl gasped behind him. _"Gracias mucho senior."_

"_De Nada."_ Kyle said with a smile as he pulled the blanket around her _"Estes mi trabajo."_

Gratitude was the best thing about being a Superhero. The worst was seeing up close just how young the girl was. The girl the creep grabbed couldn't be a day over 15. She probably lied about her age just to get whatever pissant waitress jig she had, and this was her reward for having ambition beyond her years. Grabbed off the street, raped, and probably thrown in the river when the bastard was finished. The American dream. He saw scum like this guy every day of the week, and didn't always arrive in the nick of time to save the day. During the day all that he could do was turn his obscene amount of money into even more money. It was at night that he could make a difference. He pulled out a miniature satellite phone and called 911, informing the police that they would need to take the girl to a rape crisis center. It would be hard to keep her there until they arrived, he knew, but he would take the extra effort. If she didn't press any charges he would just walk, and Nighthawk would throw him in the east river before he let that happen.

The cops showed up, and he gave them his card. He had to insure them that he would cooperate with the investigation if she needed a witness to the crime. That was the only good thing about not having a secret identity anymore. Before all he could really do was beat up the punks and drop them at the nearest precinct. He could play this game a lot better now. Make more of a difference. Even get the victim a good lawyer if they needed it. He kept a really good one on staff just for that eventuality. He had been top of his class at Harvard Law. The kind of lawyer most victims would never even see… much less be able to retain. Kyle's instructions to him were always simple: no plea bargains. Go for their balls. Once Nighthawk caught you in his talons you stayed caught. Kyle Richmond expected nothing else.

After everything had been said and done Kyle couldn't help but wonder how many crimes he hadn't stopped while he was making sure that the job was done right. As he flew off, though, he knew that just flying around righting wrongs all night was just a way to meet up with the same faces on the street every night. He flew to the Village and perched across the street from Doc's house. He wondered who else was there. Val lounging with her feet up? Patsy trying to teach her how to make a decent pot of coffee? Namor bitching about everything from worldwide pollution to the stock market? Norrin doing an impromptu poetry reading? Bruce raiding the pantry looking for pork & beans? They were the ones that he trusted most in the world. The Defenders. His best friends. So why couldn't he go to them and tell them how much he was hurting inside?

"Janet." He mumbled out loud "Why did I ever fallfor you?"

* * *

Captain America rose early in the morning, just as the first hint of pink was on the horizon. He very carefully got up and opened up his portfolio case. He pulled out a pair of running shoes, a t-shirt, a pair of sweat pants, and a new pair of boxers. He had retrieved them from his locker at the port authority, along with the civilian clothes that he had worn here. He dressed very quietly so not to disturb the still happily snoozing Rachel and crept out of the room. He was a slave to his routine sometimes, and the mansion's grounds looked like a lovely place to train. He walked out into the bracing cold and began to stretch. He saw that the snow had melted overnight, but it was still cold. Damn cold. Just the way he liked it. He breathed the frigid air into his lungs, held it there for a moment, and released a puff of vapor. As he stretched he considered the implications of what had happened the previous night, and what he would do about it.

"Cripes." A gruff voice came from behind him "I thought that the rest of them were busybodies, but you take the cake."

Cap slowly turned to face Wolverine, who was dressed in biker leathers and smelled strongly of booze.

"Good morning, Wolverine." Cap said stiffly.

"Morning?" Wolverine spat "I just got home! There was a bar in town that had entirely too much alcohol in it. Had to remedy that situation."

Cap nodded at him and continued to stretch.

"Like I said, I see where the rest of them get it. Wanda. Pietro. Even Angel and Vance. Whatever you got must be contagious. Still don't see any of them this early, though. You're a real piece of work, soldier boy. I bet you still salute the colors and get a tear in your eye when you hear the star spangled banner."

"Do you have a point, Wolverine?" Cap asked calmly, turning to him. He knew for a fact that the man wasn't drunk, because he could probably drink a distillery and still be standing. He wasn't going to excuse his behavior.

"I just think that you are the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time." Logan said, flexing and unflexing his fingers with a crackling noise.

"Story of my life." Cap quipped.

"I've got another story for you. You've always got a very distinctive smell. Kind of a combination of old spice, apple pie, and good honest sweat. But you want to know something? You got another smell on you today. Two more in fact, and neither of them have any business being there."

"It is a miracle that you can smell anything through all that hooch." Cap said, but got a surprise as he turned around.

Rachel was walking out of the front entrance, and if that wasn't enough to snatch his attention what she was wearing was. Other than her running shoes, all that she was wearing was spandex bicycle shorts and a sports bra. As soon as she hit the cold air it had the predicable effect on her. Cap swallowed a lump in his throat as he heard a low growl come from behind him. He couldn't look away from Rachel but self preservation instincts insisted that he not disregard Wolverine.

"What?" Rachel asked him with a shrug "You should have known better, Steve. You can't sneak up on a telepath, so what made you think that you could sneak away from one? I just needed to get my stuff."

"Well, you are just making friends left and right, ain't ya _Steve_?" Wolverine snarled.

"Heel, Logan." Rachel ordered him "Go sleep it off and stop acting like an undersized, incontinent, female dog."

"Pissy little bitch." Logan corrected her.

"Smile when you call me that." Rachel said.

"I'll talk to you later, Logan." Steve promised as the savage little Canadian stormed off.

In answer, Wolverine held up his left arm and popped his middle claw. It was the biggest flipping of the bird that Cap had ever been on the receiving end of.

"Don't mind him, he's just…"

"What are you doing here, Rachel?" Cap asked calmly.

"Going on a run. That was your intention, wasn't it?" She asked with enthusiasm. She seemed honestly excited.

"Yes. But…"

"You can't go alone, so don't even ask." Rachel held up her hand in front of his face.

"Ask?" Cap said incredulously.

"I know that you are used to being in charge, but as long as you're on the mansion grounds…"

"I know. Bodyguard." Cap cut her off.

"Good! Now let's run." She beamed.

"In that?" Cap asked, regarding her outfit "Women run in that these days?"

"How should I know? I just got here." Rachel shrugged "I got it from a catalogue."

"Isn't it… a little cold?" Cap asked, trying to keep his eyes locked with hers.

"We all have nipples, Steve. I can see yours through that T-shirt, too. Yours are just as much of an erogenous zone as mine are… or have you just never had a girl take things in that direction?"

"Do you enjoy teasing me?" Cap asked with a raised eyebrow.

"it's a lot of fun, yes." She admitted.

"Lets run, then." Cap capitulated "Maybe you won't have so much to say when you're out of breath."

"Tough talk from a member of the Greatest Generation." Rachel laughed.

"You just do your best to keep up." Cap said over his shoulder as he started running, but quickly snapped his eyes forward when she began after him. Looking at that run led to dangerous thoughts… and thoughts she could read.

* * *

Doctor Henry Pym put up with all the usual formalities. The questions, the distrustful glances, and the rummaging through his personal possessions. They actually gave him a lot more attention than they would a normal visitor, because they didn't very often get visitors who were capable of shrinking an Abrams Main Battle Tank to the size of a microchip and grow it back to full size when the mood struck him. It also wasn't every day that an honest, card-carrying Super Hero visited a murder suspect. It was suspicious, and the cops didn't like it. When the Detective showed up, he knew that there was going to be trouble. That was okay, because he had been dealing with trouble for a very long time. He should have gotten his fourth doctorate in trouble.

"What the hell are you doing here, Pym?" Detective Sanchez griped as he was the doctor was escorted by two uniformed officers to the visitation room.

"I'm just here to see a friend." Pym said.

"I don't buy that for a minute." Sanchez said, poking him in the chest. "I want you and your Avengers buddies sticking their noses in my investigation. I already had enough trouble with…"

"Don't you read the news?" Pym interrupted him, never a person to suffer fools gladly "I'm not an Avenger anymore."

"Yeah yeah yeah… bite me, Pym. Next thing you're going to tell me that you hung up your long johns and aren't going to be busting open perps heads anymore." Sanchez said, to the apparent discomfort of the two uniformed officers.

"As a matter of fact…" Pym began.

"Save it. You go and have your little visit. Just keep in mind that she ain't going to be any conjugal visits where I'm going to be sending her." Sanchez spat before he walked away.

_What an insufferable prick. _Pym thought as the Detective left, but the man frankly wasn't worth his time.

"I'm sorry about that, Doctor Pym." The officer on his left said "I would have said something but…"

"I know. He's the boss." Pym favored the officer with a smile "Don't worry about it."

The officers escorted him the rest of the way to the door and underwent a almost mechanical procedure for opening it. It was not a normal security door, and it looked like it could hold in the Rhino. He understood the necessity for it. Over the years this county lock-up had been the temporary home for many different kinds of criminals awaiting trial. If there was one thing that New York had no shortage of it was costumed criminals and super villains. These criminals still had civil rights, and could not just be shuttled off to the heavy duty detention centers such as Rykers Island's infamous "Devil Wing" without a trial. A mental health evaluation was required to commit them to Ravencroft, and they needed to be convicted in Federal Court before they could be sent to the Vault. This left a huge percentage of criminals at county while the legal system crawled along at a snails pace. He had himself consulted on several detention centers that utilized his technology to make the worst of the lot easier to contain. Even Doctor Octopus wasn't so fearsome when you could imprison him in a shot glass. Still, the ACLU had been fighting involuntary shrinking of prisoners as cruel and unusual punishment. He himself thought that it was slightly demeaning, but he had agreed to license the particles in the interest of helping to solve the prison overcrowding issue.

Rachel did not fall into that dangerous category of criminals like Mr Hyde or the Armadillo that normal cells had absolutely no hope of containing, and yet given the nature of the crime they were taking no chances with her. As he walked through the cast iron door he was astounded to see her manacled hand and foot like a mad gorilla. He had a flush of anger wash over his features when he saw it.

"Take off those chains." He said to the officer.

"It's procedure." The she shrugged.

"Just do it." Pym insisted.

"Mr Pym… she's…"

"Officer. Take them off or I will." Pym whispered to her "You know I can do it."

"It's your funeral." The cop sighed and walked over to were Rachel Leighton sat chained to the chair.

Pym smiled at Rachel as the officer removed the chains, and Rachel weakly smiled back.

"You better not try anything funny." She said to Rachel roughly, letting her tone imply what would happen if anything even remotely amusing happened.

The officer took a single backward glance at the two of them as she shut the door behind her and locked it. She still did not step away from the observation window that was four layers of bulletproof glass.

Pym walked leisurely up to the table with the red line across it's middle. He knew well that he was not supposed to reach across the red line under any circumstances. He had needed to fight tooth and nail just to get this much of a compromise on visitation, but there was a point where goodwill ended. The only reason that they could not visit in the typical telephone chambers divided with bulletproof glass was that she was being kept so isolated from the general population that it was a logistical impossibility. Hank smiled at her again from across the expanse of table, kind of hoping that she would be the one to begin the conversation.

"You weren't who I was expecting." Rachel said with blunt honesty.

"I know. Sometimes I like to do the unexpected. In fact, I used to be pretty good at astonishing people." Hank smiled.

"I'm glad to see you. "She admitted.

"You know, I feel exactly the same way. I do wish that it was under better circumstances, though."

"Sometimes life happens." Rachel shrugged.

"I understand that you turned yourself in."

"I couldn't think of anything else to do. I could have stayed on the run for a long time, I guess… but it was something that Steve told me…" She wasn't sure if she wanted to get onto this subject with Hank.

"I understand. Steve is a pretty noble fellow, isn't he? Sometimes, he can make you want to do the right thing without even saying a word."

Rachel looked at Hank in surprise, realizing that he had just hit the nail on the head.

"You know, when I was put on trial by the Avengers Cap was probably the only one that was not in favor of kicking me off the team. He believed in those words he said when he told people 'once an Avenger always an Avenger.' He has been severely tested at times. I was just one of those times. If I hadn't tried to hard to prove myself by setting up a transparent ruse… who knows what could have happened? He would have given me a second chance, but that wasn't the right thing to do… because I wasn't well then. Sometimes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and Steve sure has cornered the market on those."

"What are you saying?" Rachel asked, a little confused by his musings.

"I'm saying that a couple of months after that trial I found myself sitting in this same room, sitting in your chair, with Janet sitting where I am. She wasn't supposed to slide anything across the red line, but that didn't stop her from throwing the divorce papers in my face."

"Oh!" Rachel gasped, imagining the heartbreak. "What did you do?"

"What could I do?" Hank shrugged "I signed them."

"Hank… sometimes I wonder how you got though it all." Rachel said with admiration.

"The same way that you are going to. "Hank said confidently "With a little help from my friends."

"I can't ask you to do that." She sighed.

"You don't have to. I'm not going to let you rot in this place. If they set bail, I'm going to pay it. Even if I have sell my house to do it. I'm going to get Matt Murdock on this case for you. He owes me a favor. There isn't a better criminal defense attorney in the state. I'm going to testify at your trial. I'll be a character witness, scientific expert, whatever it takes. I'll get so many super heroes on the stand to speak up for you the DA's office won't know what hit them. You are not going to be convicted of this. I promise you that, Rachel." Hank said this all as passionately as she had ever heard the man speak, and her head slowly cocked to one side as she took it all in.

"You would really… do all that for me?" She almost whispered.

"What are friends for?" Hank said with a smile.

She looked away from him, but she could not stop the smile that was spreading across her face.

"Don't you care… that I really did kill him?" Rachel looked back to him with eyes fighting tears of happiness.

"I knew Alexander Gentry." Hank said flatly "The man was scum. He tried to murder me. He tried to murder Jan. He tried to murder Cap. Why? So he could sell his suit to the military and happily watch it kill more people while he counted his money. You are worth ten of him, Rachel. According to Cap, the Porcupine killed himself with his own bumbling. Even if that is less than true the world isn't exactly suffering for his absence."

"Hank?" Rachel said, not knowing how to ask her next question.

"Yes?"

"Do you mind… if I ask you a personal question?" She ventured. She didn't want to insult him or drive him off, but she had to know.

"Are you doing this because… you know… you might have feelings for me?" She croaked out as best she could.

Hank was silent for a moment, but didn't lose his composure.

"Lets just say… that I believe in you Rachel. Let's just leave it at that." He said with a patient tone and a friendly smile.

She smiled back even more warmly, if such a thing was possible.

"I… believe in you too." She said, wishing that she could somehow reach across the red line between them.

* * *

Rachel Grey actually did a pretty good job of keeping up for the first two miles.

The truth of it was that Cap found himself going easier than he normally did, going at a pace that was more of a jog for him instead of an Olympic level sprint. He appreciated that he didn't get tired like other people did. The Super Soldier serum destroyed all the fatigue poisons that his body manufactured before he even felt winded. For some reason even he didn't understand, he wanted her to keep up. After two miles Rachel looked like she was going to throw up, and by mile number three she had actually taken off from the ground and was flying after him. When he saw that he saw no further reason to hold back, so he turned on the jets and started running to shame Jessie Owens.

As she flew beside him she looked at the pumping muscles of his body as he ran with open admiration. He was a hell of a physical specimen, and she had to tell herself more than once that this was just and ordinary man who had so totally outran her. He didn't even look tired, and it didn't really seem that he had broken a sweat. It was kind of cold, but as mile number four became mile number five she told herself that there had to be something more to it. There were many secrets that Rachel Grey kept close to her heart, and she appreciated the ones that he held in his. One of them was how much pain all this training caused him, and how casually he bore that pain. Bearing pain was something that she could understand when, like her, you had no choice. Choosing to bear it seemed somewhat more noble to her, just as most things about this man did.

"I wouldn't think that you would have given up so easily." Cap said in an even voice as he ran and she flew.

"I wouldn't have thought that you were going so easily on me." Rachel countered.

Cap shook his head. He just wanted to win. Just once.

"Hey, soldier… you may be able to run me to death but you aren't going to get rid of me that easily. I told you that you were stuck with me and I meant it. If that means cheating a little… well, I didn't get these powers to style my hair with."

Steve looked at the girl flying beside him, her arms crossed defiantly despite the cold and her fatigue. She was a trooper and he couldn't hold anything against her. He decided that, given the cold, he could forgo his normal 10 miler in favor of a little more weight training. It would be the best thing for her. Since she was soaked in sweat and not running anymore she was risking hypothermia or even frostbite. She was risking it gladly, it seemed. So he turned on his heel and began jetting back to the mansion. He was surprised when she settled down next to him and started running again.

"I was just getting my second wind." Rachel coughed, looking at him with determination.

Steve just smiled and ran. He was sure that she heard what he wanted to say anyway by the expression on her face. If he was stuck with her, as she seemed to insist, he saw no reason why he couldn't at least try to enjoy the company.

"You think that your drill instructors were rough?" Rachel said with a glare "You should meet mine."

* * *

Wanda Maximoff rolled over and draped her arm over the man that she loved. He turned to regard her as she did, because he had been awake and aware the entire night. The fact that he never slept had been unsettling when they were first married, but as the years went by it was something that made her feel safe in those nocturnal hours. These days they were just lovers trying to rediscover their connection and explore their relationship. That was just the way that Wanda liked it for now, but the Vision kept wanting things to go back to the way they were. It wasn't that easy, though, because he was not the same person that he had been… and neither was she. He kissed her lips as she woke, as was a bit of a custom between them, and she made a happy little noise as she took him in her arms.

"Good morning, my dear one." The creepy monotone said the tender words.

"Good morning, Vision." Wanda sighed in contentment. In addition to being a tireless lover and a unsleeping sentinel in the night he was also the best alarm clock she had ever had in her entire life.

"Are you feeling well rested? Ready to face the day?" He asked.

"After what you did to me last night… I'm not sure about that." She laughed.

"You flatter my efforts too much." Vision deadpanned "Although my readings of Kama Sutra and Tantric methods might have helped contribute to the overall effect."

It was one of the dirty little secrets of their marriage. The one that had fundamentalist groups so enraged when they first learned of their relationship. If a woman could marry a machine, make love with a machine, than how could any kind of marriage be opposed?

"I have been thinking…" Wanda said, but then bit her lip as if to hold in what she almost said to him.

"You didn't tell the Captain." Vision helped her out. "You didn't tell him what we discussed. The decision we came to."

"It didn't come up… and it was hard to bring up." Wanda admitted.

"Will you tell him today? If you do not feel comfortable bringing it up I have no such compunctions. However, I believe that he would receive the news much better if it came from you than if I were the one to tell him."

"We need to tell him together." Wanda sighed "Just you, me, and him in as much privacy as we can get in this mansion."

"I know that this is difficult for you." The Vision said, running his artificial fingers through her very real hair.

"I've made my decision." Wanda said "In the meantime…"

"Perhaps another round of Tantra?" The Vision almost read her mind.

"You know me so well." Wanda said, stroking his cheek.

* * *

How could things go so wrong so fast?

Steve and Rachel had a good workout with the weights, and Steve had enjoyed her company. She was spunky even though she had no chance of lifting as much as him. One time she had cheated with her telekinetics just to make him laugh at how she was cranking out reps with his max press. He never had to worry about changing the weights between sets, though, because between sets the weights just seemed to fly into their appropriate places. Then the workout ended, and the trouble began. Everything was just fine until he had told her that he was going to hit the showers, and all hell broke loose.

"I'll join you." She said, following him into the locker room.

"Excuse me?" Steve looked back with a shocked expression as she toweled her hair with a towel and looked prepared to disrobe.

"I'm going to shower with you. Don't look so shocked. I'm sure that you've showered with other soldiers before."

"They were all… guys!" Cap said helplessly as she advanced on him.

"Welcome to the day and age of the gender integrated armed forces. Where I come from, everybody showers together regardless of what plumbing they were issued."

"Where I'm from…" Steve stammered.

"You can't live in the past all the time, Steve." Rachel said, tugging at the hooks of her sports bra even as he felt an invisible tug at his own clothing "Besides that, I can't let you out of my sight for a minute. You don't know Emma like I do and she sure as hell isn't going to be too bashful to snatch you up in the shower. Don't be such a big baby. Its not like I haven't seen you naked before."

"I haven't seen you!" Cap gulped, continuing his retreat. He heard the showers turn on behind him and suddenly realized that he was retreating in the wrong direction.

"No." Steve put his foot down.

"You don't have a say in the matter." Rachel fired back.

"No. No. Not just no, but HELL NO." Steve refused to budge an inch, even as Rachel telekinetically removed his clothes and striped off her own with her hands.

"Just relax. It's not that serious." She said as she threw her bra and spandex to the ground.

Cap squeezed his eyes shut and clapped one hand over them, even as he felt himself divested of his own shorts.

Before he knew it Rachel was gently soaping his back as he rigidly stood looking the other way. He refused to look back at her. It was almost like being at the position of attention. He was so thoroughly humiliated that he felt like he could die from it.

"Please don't be so angry with me." Rachel said, sounding genuinely hurt from behind him "I really only have your safety at heart. I care about what happens to you and if something happened to you because I was negligent I would… I don't know what I'd do. This is really how it's like where I'm from. Can't you… at least try it."

Steve felt his shoulders relax. He realized that he must be silently bombarding her with enough emotional recrimination to make her feel 2 inches tall. He took a breath and sent gentle, affirmative thoughts of acquiescence in her direction.

Rachel actually stopped soaping when he did that.

"You're learning fast." Rachel said, beginning her circular motions with the soap again.

For the rest of the shower, they talked only with their minds. In the language of the mind, they could express to each other a complexity of communication that words cannot. It was the most singularly unique experience of Steve's life. He was acquainted with telepathy only through those that occasionally tried to crowbar themselves into his mind. That experience could only be equated with psychic rape. This experience was a world different. Those parts that were easy to reach they cleaned themselves, but Steve felt in his mind when she wanted him to wash a hard-to-reach spot on her. His hands trembled when he did it, especially when he realized that he had to look to do it. He didn't want to dwell on her body, especially when she could hear his thoughts, but how could he help himself? He was a man. How young was she? Physically at least? She shoved the thought away from him as an irrelevance.

How did their minds weave together like that?

He turned around to face her, looking up and down her and feeling her reactions about that from her mind. She was doing the same to him. Everything that he was thinking wasn't bothering her. She was used to it from men. It was normal and expected, no mystery. She was telling the truth to him. There was such a vast bridge between where he came from and where he came from, but they were crossing it together. She drew closer to him, squeezing body wash lotion onto her hand and washing down his chest. The touching of their mind was so much more intimate than that gesture that he barely reacted to it. She wanted him to do the same for her. One good turn deserving another. He felt her tweaking motions on his chest and finally realized that she was teasing him. Being the girl to take things in that direction. He grabbed some shampoo and began washing her hair instead. He instantly realized that was the wrong decision. Given a open door into the mind of a woman, who think of their hair a hundred times more a day than they thought about sex, he realized too late that washing her hair was exponentially more erotic to her.

_Oh… crap… I'm sorry. _Cap thought as her hot, humid arousal flooded back into his mind.

_Don't be sorry and don't stop._ Rachel ordered. She was even bossy telepathically. She turned around and let him wring her short hair behind her, and then pull her under the shower head for a rinse.

_Is this really like it is where you are from?_ Steve sent the thought as he wringed the shampoo from her hair.

_Conditioner. _She thought.

He smiled, on his face and in his mind.

_It is never like this. They could do whatever they wanted with my body but I guarded my mind a lot more closely._ She sent, and Steve's attention was drawn to a network of scars on her back.

As if in response to that her hand drifted back to him and perfectly traced a scar on his thigh from where he had been bayoneted during the war. _We both have them._

Her saying that only made him realize how much more this experience meant to her, as well as pointing out the things that they did NOT both have.

_Freedom. _Steve realized _It means so much to you._

_As it does to everyone who has never had it._

Steve agreed, knowing for a fact that was true.

_You are freedom to me Steve. Freedom plucked from the realm of ideas and made human flesh and bone._

_I'm not quite sure that I can handle this. I'm not as used to this as you. Not being able to hide anything. Not having anything secret. _Steve sent as he finished conditioning her hair. She had drawn back to him until her back was pressed against his chest and she was looking straight up into his eyes over her shoulder.

_Not having any me? Not having any you? Having just the both of us?_ Rachel asked in the language of thought.

_Yes. _Steve thought _Not being apart. Being together._

_You aren't afraid. Most would be, but you aren't. There are not words for your courage, Steve. You have your secrets, but you would let me have them because you aren't afraid to be one. You aren't afraid to lose yourself in that togetherness._ Rachel thought as she slowly turned around. Her breasts pressed to his chest and he didn't even notice.

_I've been looking for that all my life. _He admitted, but just as soon as he realized what he had thought it was too late. He pulled back from her, physically as well as mentally. He tugged at the connection between them, and broke it so suddenly that he hurt them both. He clamped two hands over his face and stormed out of the shower. He was naked before her in more ways than one, and as his dripping form stormed out of the shower he could not forget that last thought that passed between them before he panicked. That next, logical step that led to them joining in body as well as in mind. How swiftly and surely it had happened. How quickly he had almost lost control… how quickly they both had.

Steve toweled off briskly, doing his best to ignore the hurt sobs coming from the girl behind him. The girl that was still in the shower, in the fetal position, hurt so much more than him by the sudden brutal break of something that had been so special. A rejection so total that there were no words to describe the intensity of it. He couldn't stand the sound, so he grabbed another towel and brought it to her. He wrapped her in it and picked her up in his strong arms. She looked up at him in surprise. Since she was no longer in his mind he was capable of surprising her now. He carried her out of the shower and sat her down on one of the locker room benches. He toweled her off with a gentleness that he had refused to give himself when he was doing the same thing. She grabbed yet another towel and swabbed at the spots on him that he had missed. They smiled together, looked into each other's eyes, and realized then that nothing either of them could do would change how they now felt about each other. Some things that are shared cannot be unshared. Some things that are built cannot be broken, even over such a distance of time and space.

* * *

_Nothing good can come of this._ Steve thought as he walked with Rachel, her happily giving him an insider's tour of the mansion. They had changed from their athletic attire to street clothes even though it was still early in the morning. Most of the mansion still slept happily, as classes did not commence until 9 AM. He looked over to her and saw confusion evident in her features. What was weighing so heavily in his mind? She hadn't even shown him the Danger Room yet.

_Come of what?_ Rachel sent him.

_Us. _Steve looked her in the eye as he thought back to her, flashing a mental image of what happened when Quicksilver discovered him and Firestar by the fireside _I'm old enough to be your great grandfather, you know. _He mimicked Angelica's sentiment.

_Technically speaking, I'm not even born yet. You're probably old enough to be my Great, Great, Grandfather._ Rachel teased him.

Steve Sighed. It was official. Someone _had_ made him feel even older.

_You worry about all the wrong things. You think that I'm not concerned about what the others would think? I hear what they think about me everyday. There comes a time in your life when you have to look within yourself and consider what you want and need. _She pleaded with him, both with eyes and mind.

_I'm sorry, Rachel, but you should know me well enough to know why that can't be._ Steve sent with true sorrow. Why did this have to be so hard?

_I know. The mission comes first, doesn't it? _She thought, rife with understanding _But if that is true, Steve, why did you come here instead of going after the Crimson Cowl? Isn't that your mission?_

_My friends are first, the mission second, and I am third. _Steve thought coyly, putting his own spin on the quote of a man he had never had the opportunity to meet in and era he had never experienced.

_Given what I know about you, you put yourself a little lower on the list than that._ Rachel sent him with a complex flush of emotions: a dash of anger and a pinch of despair. It was hard for Steve to feel what she felt in response to what he was "saying."

Rachel got a strange look on her face for a moment, glared at a nearby wall, and grabbed Steve by the arm roughly to stop him in place. Her eyes narrowed and Steve wondered what she sensed coming. A moment later Emma Frost came around the corner, looking honestly surprised to see the two of them. It was good playacting, but given Rachel's earlier reaction Steve found it highly unlikely. She was dressed in a skin-tight low-cut scrap of leather that left little to the imagination. She wore that around school kids? Perhaps this entire bizarre situation could now be resolved. It never hurt to be a little optimistic.

"Good morning." Emma said pleasantly "I never expected to see the two of you together… and if I am not mistaken you have not parted since last night's misunderstanding?"

"I don't think that anything was misunderstood." Steve said crisply. It was almost strange to speak again, as he realized he had not uttered a word before stepping into the shower and yet had said so much.

"But it was!" Emma said with saccharine sweetness "I was only working with the mandate of your friends, who were concerned with your mental well being! I was only trying to help!"

"You lying whore." Rachel snarled, but Steve sent her a quick thought to let him handle this situation. From the instant look on her face, she had gotten it.

Emma's eyes narrowed momentarily, but her mask of sweetness popped back into place with remarkable alacrity.

"Ms Frost…" Cap said with stiff formality.

"Call me Emma." She said with a smile that looked like it hurt her face.

"I think not." Cap grimaced "Ms Frost. I have to say that, regardless of what your intentions were, your kind of help is the last thing I need."

"Denial of a problem is not uncommon in these circumstances, Captain. It is totally understandable." Emma said with very believable compassion.

"If you wanted to help me, as you say, you would have been better served to talk to me about it first. All that being said, I am afraid that I cannot imagine what kind of help that… invasion was supposed to provide." Steve said sourly.

"I admit that I was a little overzealous, but is that so bad? The only issues that we explored in that session were the ones that were weighing most heavily upon your mind. Do you deny that you were troubled by what we were discussing? Do you deny that the surrogate experience that I was providing was making you feel better? It is not an uncommon form of therapy to engage in role playing and work with surrogates… it is simply my powers that allow me to be more effective and expedient with them."

For a moment, her words almost swayed Steve Rogers. It seemed to make perfect sense when he thought back to those moments when he indeed felt that the problems he had been agonizing over were very small indeed if he would simply follow his heart. But then a fiery, brutal anger burst through his mind. It wasn't from him. It was from Rachel. He realized swiftly that their minds had still been joined so close and that she could sense the intrusion that Emma was attempting. It had been subtle, and under normal circumstances it might have worked. Steve could only stand by as the two telepaths briefly struggled on a plane of the mind that he could not see, staring daggers of hatred at each other. It seemed to be Emma who blinked first, but it did not seem to Steve to be because she was spent. Rather, she seemed to see the disapproval on Steve's face and… just capitulate.

"Is that going to be the way it is, you little twit?" Emma snapped at Rachel, who was still fuming.

"I'm not going to let you touch him again. Ever." Rachel Grey promised with grim determination, taking his arm with both hands and pulling him closer.

"Is that your wish, Captain? To be coddled and protected by this child? To hide your problems behind her power?" Emma taunted.

Cap didn't say a word. He didn't think that he had to. This woman's patronizing arrogance reminded him too much of Moondragon in those dark early days. What was it about telepaths that convinced them that the possessed all the answers? That anyone who disagreed with them was a mental midget? That anyone who could not read another's mind was without worth? He simply let his expression do the talking for him. If Rachel was preventing the older woman from reading his mind, let her read his face.

"Leave him alone. I'm warning you for the last time." Rachel said.

"Fine. If you wish to play the enabler to his disorder I cannot stop you." Emma said with a haughty tone "But you should know that Scott has just returned from his mission with his strike team. I would not be surprised if a few chickens had returned to roost with him."

The woman snapped on her heel and strode down the hall to a destination known only to her. The two of them did not move, but rather let her go.

"This is one of the strangest mornings of my life." Steve admitted.

"Welcome to Xavier's." Rachel said with the beginnings of a smile.

* * *

It had been one of those missions that was much better when it was over.

Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Havok, and the newly resurrected Psylocke had really been through the wringer. A normal, everyday strike on a group of anti-mutant terrorists had turned into a dimension-twisting doppelganger-fighting romp through the Mojoverse that had left Cyclops with an irresistible urge to nosedive into his bottle of Wild Turkey. Angel and Betsy were leaning on one another with a tenderness that belayed the constant bickering they had engaged in throughout the adventure. Bobby looked like he wanted to lock himself in a freezer and go to sleep for about a year. Havok kept swearing under his breath about goddamn alternate dimensions. Throughout the mission Scott had constantly been second guessing his decision not to bring any of the former Avengers along. He was not comfortable enough with them yet to trust them on strike missions, but in this instance they would have come in handy. As they stepped off the Blackbird they had no idea of what they were walking into.

Wolverine and Storm were standing side by side at the bottom of the ramp, and neither of them looked in the least bit happy.

"What's happening, Ororo?" Scott asked Storm, who he had left in charge of the mansion.

"We've got to talk, slim." Wolverine said, not giving her a chance to respond.

"What is it, Logan?" Scott asked, his exasperation showing.

"I'm warning you, slim… you ain't going to be happy."

* * *

Steve and Rachel had been having an animated breakfast with Vance, Angelica, Vision, and the Scarlet Witch when Cyclops finally made his appearance. He had a look on his face that made it seem like he had spent three hours sucking lemons. The breakfast had been going well, and even Vance had said a kind word or two when he heard that Cap was planning to leave after the breakfast was concluded. Angel had been right about one thing… Cap was hard to hold a grudge against. Not impossible, however, because Pietro had obviously found better things to do this morning. Wanda seemed to be feeling awkward about something, but hid it well. Steve reasoned that perhaps it had something to do with how close Rachel was sitting to him. When Scott Summers made his appearance, Cap felt a deep disappointment. He didn't have to be a mind reader like Rachel to tell that the man had an axe to grind, and he had no doubt regarding who that was with.

"Captain." Scott said politely, if coldly "I'm very sorry to interrupt, but would you mind if I had a word with you? In private."

"Not at all. Please excuse me, everyone." Cap said, standing up and walking to join the X-men's field leader.

He was halfway across the room before he noticed that Rachel was right behind him.

"Rachel, I'm going to need to speak to the Captain alone." Scott admonished his daughter.

"No." Rachel said defiantly.

The red line of Scott's visor glowed red, just as Rachel's eyes began to light up with white luminescence. It seemed a case of "like father, like daughter" and Steve was sorry to be between them at this moment. He knew, though, that he had to intervene.

"Cyclops is right, Rachel." Cap told her.

_Anything that he can tell you he can tell me! _Rachel silently screamed.

_I think that this is something that we have to settle between the two of us. _Cap argued.

_Macho guy stuff? I thought that you were better than that, Steve. Why don't you just both pull out and I'll tell you which one is bigger? _

Cap couldn't help it. He snorted with laughter.

"What's so funny?" Cyclops asked coldly.

"Private joke." Rachel said as sweetly as she could.

"Can I suggest a compromise?" Cap asked.

"I haven't known you to be the great compromiser, Captain." Cyclops observed.

"Rachel can come along, but we talk alone in your office… with her outside the door." Cap suggested.

"I don't see how that is even remotely necessary." Cyclops said.

"I agree." Rachel chipped in.

"That is why it is a compromise." Cap shrugged "Nobody goes away one hundred percent happy."

"That is… acceptable." Cyclops finally said as he turned and walked away "I need to talk to her when we are done anyway."

He didn't see how Rachel was sarcastically mouthing his words behind his back as he walked, and Cap had to do everything in his power not to laugh.

* * *

Once in the office, with Rachel practically steaming outside the door, Captain America watched Cyclops pace. The strong and steady leader of the X-men that he had known for years seemed to be at a total loss for words. As if he knew exactly what to say but could not bring himself to say it. Cap thought it was best to just remain silent and let him sort his thoughts out.

"I hear that you have had an eventful, if short, stay here while I have been gone."

"Yes, that is certainly true." Cap allowed.

"I have to apologize for any… rude behavior that you may have been on the receiving end of. Not everybody around here shares the high esteem in which I hold you. Not everybody knows what it is like to be a leader… to make tough decisions. First and foremost I understand what you went through in Washington DC. I didn't understand so much, frankly, before Wanda asked me how far I would go to preserve the X-men as a team. However, None of that is why I want to talk to you." Scott said these words with difficulty, as if he were wringing them out of himself.

"I'm listening." Cap responded calmly, or as calmly as one could be in the presence of a man that could kill you by looking at you.

"Sometimes it is just as hard to be a father as it is to be a leader." Cyclops continued "You have to make decisions that are just as tough. Being a single father with a grown daughter that is almost as old as youwho hasn't been born yet… that is just insane. Especially when you have a son who is older than you running around and blowing people away. Not to mention another son that is a clone of your original son who is a psychopathic villain. Or yet another son that is from an alternate reality that no longer exists running around doing God knows what. All of them from three... maybe four...different women who are the same women yet somehow not. Am I… making myself clear here?" Cyclops tried to explain.

"I wouldn't know. I've never had any children." Cap said softly "I think that I understand while you have that bottle on your desk, though."

Scott opened a drawer and elbowed in the bottle of Wild Turkey. It hit the bottom of the drawer with a clunk and he slammed it shut.

"My point is… I don't know what to do with this situation. What would you do if you were in my shoes? According to Logan, and I don't see any reason why he would lie, you had… relations with both my girlfriend and my daughter last night." Scott began breaking down in anger, as if saying the words released the anger he had pent up inside. "What I really want to hear right now… is for you to deny it.

"I did not have sexual relations with those women." Cap said truthfully.

Scott began to tremble.

"What… exactly… did… you… do?" Scott enunciated every word dangerously.

Cap sighed, biting the bullet, knowing that the truth would hurt but that lying wouldn't help.

"I made out with Emma and slept with Rachel." Cap admitted.

Steve Rogers ducked just in time, as the ruby quartz lenses flashed and an inconceivable bolt of force blew a hole in the wall the size of a filing cabinet.

"You son of a bitch!" Scott Summers screamed at the top of his lungs "I'll have your soul!"

The door exploded inward and Rachel flew in, eyes blazing. She flung her father against the wall and put up a wall of telekinetic force between the two men. As soon as Steve got back to his feet her arms flung around him protectively and glared at her father.

"Leave him alone!" She screamed.

"Stay out of this, Rachel! This is between me and him!" Scott yelled back, struggling against the force holding him against the wall. "Let… me… go!"

"Promise me you won't hurt him and I'll let you go!" Rachel said.

"I can't promise that." Cyclops growled.

"He didn't do anything wrong!" Rachel insisted "It was Emma…"

"You can't blame her for everything, Rachel!"

"You can't blame her for anything! Ms Perfect can do no wrong! Let me ask you this Dad! Would you even be upset if Emma wasn't involved? Would you even care if he did me raw if your precious Emma wasn't involved?"

"Did he? Did he do it?" Scott growled better than even Wolverine could have.

"No! Of course not! I spent the night with him to protect him from Emma! She was trying to break into his mind and didn't care what kind of methods why used to do it! She practically raped him and if I hadn't shown up when I did she would have!"

Cyclops didn't look any calmer.

"What do you have to say for yourself, Captain?" Scott asked pointedly.

"I think rape is a pretty strong word… but she was coming on pretty strong." Cap said "I don't know what her true motives were, but she insisted that she was trying to help me. I didn't know that it was her. She was in my mind and made me believe she was… somebody else."

That struck a chord with Scott Summers as entirely too familiar.

"Let me go." Scott ordered Rachel "I promise I won't hurt him. I'm sorry that I lost my temper."

Reluctantly, Rachel released him and dropped the TK shield. She looked fearful about what was going to happen next, and a crowd was beginning to form outside what was left of the door.

"I need to talk to Emma about this." Scott said "I'm sorry again for all this, Cap. It was just the stress… the mission… I'm sure that we can straighten this all out."

"No harm done… except to your office." Steve forgave him, brushing pulverized drywall off of his shoulders.

Scott left to have a heart to heart with his lover, and it wasn't going to be pretty.

Cap saw a lot of faces in the gathering crowd, and all of them had a different expression when they saw how Rachel was holding onto him. Storm looked surprised. Wolverine looked disgusted. Kitty Pryde and Rogue looked downright perplexed. The Vision was impassive, but Wanda looked horrified. Justice and Firestar were looking at each other with the question that they could not bring themselves to ask. Angel and Iceman were smiling like a couple of frat boys watching a porn movie. The Beast couldn't stop shaking his head, and Cap was so glad that Pietro wasn't there that he had no words that could describe the gratitude.

_I need to get out of here._ Cap thought, not thinking who might be listening.

_Please don't go. _Rachel said in his mind _Please don't leave me._

_I have to! Look at all the trouble I caused._

_All the drama was already here. You just got caught in the middle._

_It doesn't change the fact. If this was the bomb then I was the fuse. I should never have come here._

_You can't go! You don't understand! I've never fallen in love before. I've stepped in it a few times, but never fallen in it. This isn't something that just happens everyday._

_I have to._

_Stay with me, Steve. Please. Everything else will be all right. The super villains and the costumed nutcases aren't going to go anywhere. You'll still beat them all, just like you always do. I won't let anything bad happen to you. I promise. Don't you believe me?_

_I believe you, Rachel. I just don't think that you understand. I came here to build bridges, not burn them._

_You have. You built a bridge between you and me._

Steve couldn't argue with her. As she held him tight he put one arm around her and looked without fear to the challenging eyes of the assembled X-men. It was all like a dream, and he wondered if he was not still asleep with Emma poking around in his mind, testing him with scenarios. Yet somehow he knew that was not true. This was not a dream even though it seemed like it. If there was a man in the world who should know about dreams, it was Captain America. He had spent his entire life representing a dream that he had always denied himself… yet never lost sight of. He hadn't intended this to happen, but now that it had what was he going to do about it? The worst thing about dreams is that, sooner or later, it is time to wake up.

**Next: In final battle**

**_The secret of the crimson cowl revealed? The fate of the Syndicate Sealed? Will I ever finish this story? Tune in next week, True Believers! _**


	19. This We'll Defend

**Author's notes: A big thank you goes out to all of my reviewers who spoke with such honesty about the last chapter. I treasure your candor more than anything and it is the most useful tool that I have in improving my writing. I hope that by the end of this chapter you guys will see what I was doing with the last one. If not, writing is rewriting sometimes. I don't believe that there is something wrong with a story that I can't fix. **

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Chapter 17: This We'll Defend**

There are some days that will be forever remembered. Days that will be emblazoned in the consciousness of those that experienced them. In the course of this story we have learned of many such days in the life of Steve Rogers. The day he first got a glimpse of life's cruelty. The day of his meeting with his first love, and the day that he learned how short their time together was destined to be. The day he decided that he would not stand by while this happened. The day he was forever reborn as a super soldier. His first, fateful encounter with the Red Skull. The loss of his parents, and the meeting with James Buchanan Barnes. Days that could be described in a few, famous words: Pearl Harbor. Bataan. St. Piedro, Normandy, Bastogne, and Buchenwald. Places where lives were forever lost and voices forever silenced. All of these days giving us another piece of the puzzle that is this man. This day is the last piece of that puzzle. One twenty four hour period where the question that we have been pursuing will finally be answered.

Who is Steve Rogers?

* * *

Steve Rogers looked out to the faces of his friends, all members of the only family he had known since he was pulled out of the icy waters of the Atlantic ocean and realized that his entire lifetime had passed him by. They were standing in the privacy of the mansion's library, where they thought that they could quietly discuss the recent events that so troubled all of them. The Beast, the Vision, The Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Firestar, and Justice. He didn't understand why, faced with so many of his comrades, he still felt so alone. It was a consequence not of who was there, but rather who wasn't. He could not hope to explain to them what had happened between him and Rachel Grey, who he had learned had taken her mother's name as Marvel Girl. Rather, he stuck to the hard facts instead of the emotional truths and hoped that they could understand those. If they didn't he didn't have a prayer of ever rebuilding the bridge of trust that he had come here to ensure.

"So after the… incident, Rachel felt the need to protect me from Emma. I do not know whether or not she was exaggerating the danger or not, but we decided to err on the side of caution. That is why she refused to leave my side." Steve explained.

"I am so sorry about that, Steve." Beast sighed "I owe you an apology. When I spoke to Emma about this I never intended her to take it to the extreme that she evidently decided on. I surely thought that she would propose it to you first. I cannot even begin to describe what kind of a breech of professional and psychological ethics that was on her part, and I have to say that in the future I will have to be much more careful what I bring to her attention."

There was a part of Steve Rogers that wanted to yell at his old friend. To tell him that he should have kept his nose in his own business and that he had no right to discuss anything regarding his suspicions regarding his mental state to anyone. But that was a small part, and a small man that he had never wanted to be.

"I forgive you, Hank. You were only doing what you thought was best."

"I'm sorry about what we all thought… what we all said to you and Rachel." Vance apologized. The scene that was set in Cyclops office led to rampant speculation and more than a couple accusations.

"I am not sorry." Quicksilver contradicted Justice, causing the telekinetic mutant to stare daggers at the hot-tempered speedster. "I am not satisfied with your explanation either. The X-men had to practically pry her off you with a crowbar even after Emma's duplicity was revealed. I want to know what went on between the two of you."

"It's good to want things, Pietro." Firestar snapped at the son of Magneto "That doesn't make it any of your damn business."

"Mind your tongue, girl!" Quicksilver fired back.

"Don't talk to her like that, Pietro! I've warned you before!" Justice snarled.

"I do not think that this is constructive to…" The Vision tried to interject but everyone ignored him.

"Shut up!" Quicksilver snarled.

"No! You shut up!" Vance countered.

"Both of you just shut up!" Beast leapt between them, probably not the wisest course of action that he could have taken.

Through this entire fit of bickering, Captain America had his eyes locked with the Scarlet Witch, and he saw the question in her eyes. The question, and the hurt. This had been a bittersweet, tough reunion for all of them. But it had been especially hard on Steve and Wanda. The last two days he had found himself constantly second guessing his decision to come here. If Wanda knew the words that he had said during the "session" with the White Queen would she still have that look of hurt in her eyes? Could his repeating those three simple words to her take all that pain away? Or would it only make it worse? Would she even believe him? Did he even have the right to intrude upon the young relationship that was rebuilding itself between the Vision and Wanda? He did not believe he did, and that belief made his decisions a lot easier to bear.

"Nothing." Steve said.

"Excuse me?" Quicksilver yelled, still raising his voice as he had to Vance.

"Nothing happened between me and Rachel." Cap said with sincerity, but his inner voice - that Rachel had gone such a long way to helping him discover - said something different. _Nothing happened, and everything happened. But that contradiction is something that you could never understand._

"I still think that you are taken with her." Pietro griped, but at least he had stopped shouting. "I saw the way that she was looking at you, Captain. I saw how you acted together."

"You're a suspicious creep, Pietro!" Vance yelled.

"Whelp! If I had a horsewhip I'd horsewhip you!" Quicksilver barked.

"Pietro! Vance! Both of you behave yourselves!" Wanda yelled at them with a commanding voice. She sounded like she was talking to her class.

"I know how things looked, Pietro. Last night and this morning was one of the most… confusing of my life. All that I can do is ask you to trust me."

"Save it. I'm done trusting you. I trusted you with the well being of my sister and myself. I trusted you to stand up for Mutantkind when we needed you the most. I trusted you, at the very least, To conduct yourself with dignity and respect under this roof. You have failed on all counts and you disgust me. Go sell your hypocrisy somewhere else, because I am done listening to you!" Pietro shouted, and in a blur he was gone.

The slamming of the door echoed throughout the mansion, and outside the window a silver streak tore through the wet grass of the estate in the direction of the exit gate.

"He does that at least once a week." The Beast sighed, breaking the silence.

"I remember." Cap responded evenly, but what the mutant speedster had said still stuck in his mind. If Quicksilver had looked up to him in the way that he said, viewing him as a surrogate father, then he had failed miserably in his parental duties.

"There is only one thing that is for certain." Cap said to those remaining "I have to leave as soon as possible. My presence her has been more disruptive than I hoped, and it is obvious that I have overstayed my welcome."

"Don't be so hasty, Steve." The Beast argued "You forget that this is where I grew up. You're just used to how things were at Avengers mansion. Everybody there was on their best behavior and at the top of their game because that's what you expected of them. You have to trust me when I say that this is business as usual around here."

"That can't be true." Steve said with a shake of his head.

Everybody in the room nodded.

"You have got to be kidding me." Steve said, his brow wrinkling in disbelief.

"You should have been here last week when Betsy came back from the dead and found out what Warren was doing, or last month when Rachel came back from the dead and found out what her dad was up to, or the month before when…" Beast began ticking off fingers as he gave examples.

"I think that I get the general idea." Cap interrupted.

"I'm still healing from that fight I got in with Logan. What was that about again?" The Beast groaned, rubbing a sore spot where a tuft of fur was missing.

"Where the heck is Polaris, anyway? Is she still insane or is she dead?" Vance asked the Vision.

"Both, I think. I will check my data banks." The Vision's monotone droned even more dryly than usual, if such a thing were possible.

"I still feel responsible for all this. People expect better of me and I expect better of myself. It would be better if I left immediately. I have very serious business to take care of. I just wanted to make things right with all of you. Give you the answers you needed. I had no right to come here and interfere with the new lives that you are building for yourselves. I didn't see that until this morning." Captain America said this all in the crisp, confident voice of leadership that he had even when he was admitting him mistakes.

"Before you leave, Captain, would you mind if Wanda and I spoke with you privately?" The Vision said.

Under normal circumstances, Captain America would ask what they needed to discuss that could not be discussed in front of team mates, but he had to remind himself that these were not the Avengers anymore. Not only that, he had a perfect idea what they wanted to talk about.

"That would be fine, Vision." Cap said.

Vance and Angel both extended their hands to Cap.

"I guess that this is goodbye for now." Cap said to the young man as he shook his hand. "I'm proud of you, and I respect what you have done here. I just wanted you to know that."

"I can't tell you how much it means to hear you say that. I won't say that it hasn't been hard." Vance admitted "All of this."

Cap only nodded.

Firestar only held his hand for a minute before drawing him into a hug. Given what had happened in the past day or so Cap almost pushed her away before he returned it.

"You've got to stop worrying so much." Angelica said simply, smiling up at him. Even Vance was smiling behind her at the look of surprise on Cap's face.

"I'll try." Cap said with a nod, not knowing if he would be successful.

"Good luck with your mission." Vance said as he took Angel's arm and led her out of the library. Then they were gone.

"I will admit that I am still worried about your condition, Captain, but I respect your decisions in that regard as well. If you ever change your mind, and feel like you need help, then I want you to know that you are welcome to come here any time. Day or night. I want you to come to me if you need anything." Hank McCoy insisted, perching on top of a bookshelf.

"I can promise you that much." Cap said, thinking again of all the ways in which he was right. "You'll be the first person I come to."

"Farewell, then, my Captain." The Beast said with a bow, bounding off with a toothy smile "Until we meet again."

That left Cap alone with just the Vision and the Scarlet Witch.

* * *

Rachel Grey had been in this gathering of heroes for only a short time, but she had become comfortable here mostly because of the fond memories those around her had for her. Even though she had no memory of these events, the times that they had lived and fought together, the fact that they all had them was comforting. The positive, friendly emotions that leaked out of the minds of everyone around her were so many light years different from all that she had ever known that she had almost accepted those memories as her own. She hoped that they did not misunderstand her anger and frustration as being directed toward them. After all, they did not have the benefit of telepathy. The way that she had been nearly forcibly separated from Steve by the former Avengers filled her with a gnawing resentment and a burning anger. The men of the Mansion had been exiled from this room, and for that she was grateful. Their combination of green jealousy and lustful contemplation of sexual scenarios was nauseating. She looked to the four women that stood around her and did not feel, as Steve had, that she had been called into the principals office. For she could sense the compassion, love, and understanding that they felt for her. All of them save one.

Kitty Pryde was sitting next to her happily stirring sugar into tea. Evidently this was a ritual that the two of them had picked up in Great Britain, but to Rachel it seemed a little early in the morning for it. Storm sat across from her, warmly smiling with her too-beautiful exotic features. Rogue was next to her, twirling a lock of her hair in one finger and chewing gum as if she could destroy it between her teeth if she chomped hard enough. Psylocke was the only mind that she received nothing from. The fellow telepath ever shielded her thoughts from her, and Rachel always respected that. She returned the favor. They were all nervous, she knew, because of her refusal to talk. Betsy, at least, should have understood that she didn't need to.

"It's all right. Rachel." Kitty Pryde courageously began "We were all young once. We understand."

_I don't think that you do. _Rachel thought, but tried not to project.

"Captain America is an extraordinary man." Storm agreed, oblivious to Rogue rolling her eyes next to her "Having never met him before, you probably only overreacted."

"He is a legend, probably more literally in your time than in ours." Betsy said in her genteel British accent "It is easy to see how you could have been so excited by the presence of a figure of such… notoriety."

"Ah think the word you're lookin' for is 'celebrity.'" Rogue contended.

Rachel just sipped the tea when it was offered to her.

"I used to have a little crush on him." Kitty admitted with a bit or color in her cheeks "He's just so damn noble and manly. I think it was that entire forbidden fruit thing… like he was a guy too good for any woman to have."

"A situation better fantasy than reality." Betsy said, speaking from experience. "I do not think that the Captain's virility can be doubted, however."

"Ah felt the exact same way… but then he busted out my bicuspid and the dentist bill sure cured me of that." Rogue griped.

"Hush." Storm admonished the southerner.

"What we are all trying to say is… people overreacted to the situation because of things that have nothing to do with you. Just because of what happened in Washington DC and…" Kitty tried to explain.

"What does any of that have to do with Emma trying to rape him?" Rachel snarled, watching them all recoil at that unexpected eruption.

"I… we…" Storm tried to explain.

"You weren't there." Rachel cut her off "You didn't see what I saw. I just wanted to protect him from her. Don't you understand that?"

"We're not saying that you shouldn't have tried… but did you really think that her needed it? He's Captain America."

"He couldn't have protected himself from Emma. She's too powerful and ruthless. Even more than any of you will admit." Rachel said, staring directly at Psylocke.

"We are all well aware of that." Storm said coldly, and Kitty nodded.

"You may be aware, but you don't understand." Rachel railed against her, trying to put it into words. It was so much easier with just minds. Words were so much harder "He is a real hero. We do what we do… all of us… out of necessity. Self preservation. We are only heroes because it benefits us to do it. Because we have no alternative. He does! He puts himself on the line every day, and has done it for so long, even though it has caused him nothing but pain and misery. He does it, and he will never stop doing it until the day that he dies! I've never met a person like him in my entire life, who gives everything and asks nothing. Not in my entire life. None of you could possibly understand him the way that I do, only Betsy might if he touched his mind the way that I have."

The room was stunned into silence by the tirade, and it was only then that Rachel realized that she had sprung to her feet and that her tea was boiling on the coffee table like it was about to explode.

"Ah've touched his mind." Rogue admitted quietly "All ah saw was death… and pain… misery… horror… suffering…"

"Maybe that's all you were looking for. "Rachel responded just as softly.

Rogue looked away.

"Loneliness." Rogue said finally, looking back "The most lonely mind ah've evah known."

Rachel nodded, and Kitty looked very confused. She couldn't stop thinking about the story that Captain America had told the class. If that was just the tip of an iceberg of suffering that Captain America had experienced she was relieved that she could not see what was beneath the surface. Kitty Pryde was a patriotic all American girl, and Captain America fascinated her. She could not help but admire him. But for so long he had just been a man in a mask that did impossible deeds that she could not believe that they were having this conversation. He was a mystery to her, even after hearing all of Wanda and Pietro's stories painting such an intimate portrait of the man. He might as well be on the other side of the ocean for her. She wondered how Betsy or Storm felt, not being Americans, but they weren't talking. She was suddenly very grateful that she was not a telepath. Grateful that she had not seen the things that only Rachel and Rogue could understand.

"It is easy to be lonely… when you are unique." Storm finally said.

They all knew something about that.

* * *

"We're getting married again." Vision and the Scarlet Witch said simultaneously, their arms around each other.

"That is wonderful." Captain America said with sincerity. There was no jealousy or deep down regret nor resentment at the statement. He was not dying inside or cursing fate. Margaret Rogers had not raised her son to be that way. He looked into Wanda's eyes, saw the happiness there, and smiled. He had actually been expecting the announcement, and wondering when they would tell him.

"To be honest… we didn't think that would be your reaction." Vision said.

"I am really happy for you. Both of you." Steve said "It is a big relief for me, actually. You two deserve a chance at happiness."

"Do you really believe that, Captain?" Vision asked, almost slyly.

"Yes." Steve said without a doubt.

"If there was something that you could do to assure our happiness, would you do it?" Vision asked.

"Of course." Steve said. "You are my friends. Anything at all that I can do I will do."

"Well, we have agreed that it would be best for Wanda to ask." The Vision said, turning to his wife.

"We both agree…" Wanda began nervously "That we want to try to have children again."

Steve was puzzled, as much as he was when he heard that they had procreated the first time. It was the result of magic, though, which he had never really understood or trusted much.

"Do you want me to be the Godfather?" Steve asked "Because I'm not married… or Catholic."

It was a weak joke, but Wanda laughed despite her obvious nervousness.

"As you are aware, Captain, I am incapable of fathering children, but would relish the opportunity to be a father again."

"The first time we tried… we made a horrible mistake trusting in sorcery." Wanda said "But there are other methods."

Steve was still confused. He didn't see where he fit in.

"We don't want you to be the Godfather, Steve." Wanda swallowed "We want you to be the father."

For a moment Steve Rogers did not move at all, but as the realization struck him his jaw moved and he took a step back. He felt his head shaking and he raised his hands as if to defend himself. Never in his life had he been so totally shocked.

"No…" he managed to force through his lips.

"But Steve…" Wanda said, seeing his distress and instantly knowing that she had made a mistake.

"No, Wanda. My answer is no. I cannot… there is no way… with another man's wife…"

"I think that you misunderstand, Captain." Vision tried to enlighten him "With modern technology there is no need for you to have an… active role in the pregnancy. You are the perfect human specimen, and therefore a thoroughly logical choice for a surrogate father. All that is needed if for you to donate the genetic material and a medical professional can artificially…"

"I said no!" Steve shouted taking another step back "I can't do that! I can't give a part of myself like that knowing… it's just not right."

"Steve, please let's just talk about this." Wanda pleaded.

"I'm sorry, Wanda. I'm so sorry." Cap said as he turned on his heel and marched off, the suffocating feeling crushing his heart "I can't do it. I'm sorry."

"Steve!" Wanda shouted after him.

"Let him go, Wanda." Vision said, grabbing her arm "Give him time to think. He is simply overwhelmed with emotion. Once he has the opportunity to consider it he will see the logic of the situation as we have."

"I must convince him! I have to make him see!" She cried as she struggled.

Wanda pulled her arm away and ran after Steve as he slammed the door behind him. The Vision watched her go until she too disappeared from sight. He emitted a sound that, were it to come from a human, could have been a sigh. Left alone in the quiet library, he drifted over to the stacks and scanned the titles by Dewey decimal number. When he reached the title that he had been looking for, he pulled it free. He sat down comfortably and relaxed before he opened it up, breathing in the scent of old paper and wondering what kind of associations the odor evoked in humans. His advanced nose simply broke the scent into basic components and stored it in his database as "old paper." He opened up the hardback copy of _A Tale Of Two Cities _and slowly began to read.

* * *

"Steve!" Wanda yelled almost unable to keep up with him even though he was walking and she was running.

He didn't respond, but just kept on storming away. Having learned her lesson before, she ran in front of him and turned around, blocking his path. He almost ran into her before she put her hands out and caught his brawny chest.

"Please." She begged.

The eyes that met hers were the saddest that she had ever seen them. She could almost swear that there were tears in them that stubbornly refused to fall. He just stood there, arms at his sides, and she held him in place. Physically, she had no chance of doing this. He was stopping for her, she knew. She threw her arms around him, as if by doing so she could change his mind, but he didn't react at all. She looked up and he was looking away from her. His throat worked like he was having difficulty swallowing.

"You don't have to do this if you don't want to." She said to him "We just want you… to think about it. To give it some thought. It is nothing immoral or wrong. People do it all the time. Wouldn't it be a bigger crime to simply have it be an anonymous donor? I've known you for so long and I love you so much…if I could have any part of you in my life…"

"Is this real?" Steve asked, his eyes clenched shut.

"What?"

"Is any of this real? Is this now? Is this really happening?" Steve pleaded with her "Please tell me… are you Wanda?"

"Of course I am, Steve." Wanda said carefully.

Steve swallowed hard. "I'm sorry, Wanda. I can't be the father of your child. I wish that I could explain why. Maybe I'm being unreasonable, stuck in the past, but you have to understand. I have to leave. I have to go right now. I can't stay here a second longer."

Wanda was surprised when he suddenly pushed past her, heading straight for the mansion's front door.

"Steve!" Wanda yelled as he turned his back on her.

"Goodbye, Wanda." He offered weakly.

Then she said something that stopped him in his tracks.

"I can make you love me." Wanda said, her voice trembling.

Steve slowly turned around and saw her pointing her arm at him, her hand clenched into a trembling fist. Tears were streaming down her cheeks but she was enunciating every syllable in a tone as hard as granite.

"I can do it. I can do anything if I want it enough. If I can control the energy. I can make you love me. I can make you love me forever and never leave. All I have to do… is point."

Steve turned to her and slowly took the two steps that separated them.

"All I have to do…"

"You don't have to do anything, Wanda." Steve said softly, gently gripping her wrist and pulling it back down to her sides.

"I… I…" Wanda sobbed.

"There's a word for that." Steve said as he gripped her shoulders.

She fell into him, wracked with sobs. He could feel her heartbreak threatening to burst out of her body. He had hurt her so much and he had no idea why. All that he knew was that he had just had the most intense attack that he had experienced, and it had happened the moment that Wanda had asked him to be a father. It had only ended when he saw that she was crying.

"I do love you, Wanda." He said, tearing it loose from his soul "You don't have to do anything. I do love you."

She looked up to him in shock, having heard words that she never thought that she would ever hear. He held her close, kissed her on the forehead. Kissed her on her cheek. Then finally kissed her on the lips.

"Goodbye, Wanda." He repeated, and turned again to leave.

He left her stunned, unable to move or breathe, wondering for a moment if she had unleashed her power on him. But she knew that she hadn't. She knew that he was telling the truth, because he didn't lie. It was no comfort, because he left her with nothing but the sight of his back as he left her. She stood there, touching her lips with her fingertips as if she could hold the sensation there. Then he was gone, and a part of her was gone with him. She leaned against the wall, slowly slid down it, and sat there crying for a long time.

* * *

"So you were just going to leave without saying goodbye." Rachel said from behind him.

When Steve Rogers whirled around he realized that he was no longer in the front drive of Xavier's school, but rather in a kind of misty whiteness in all directions. He was no longer in civilian clothes, but in full costume. When he looked back, Rachel was in a green costume that seemed evocative of her mother's.

"I… thought that we had already said our goodbyes." Steve said.

"Then you need to work on them." Rachel said bitterly.

"Where are we?" he said.

"Does it matter?" She responded tartly.

"It might help."

"This is a place of pure mind, where we can talk without worrying about interruptions." Rachel explained.

"Or worrying about me leaving."

"Do you really think that I would do that? Imprison you? If you don't want to be here than just leave!" Rachel shouted.

"I didn't mean that." Steve assured her "I'm sorry. I do feel trapped, but not by you. I have a mission…"

"You will always have a mission, Steve." Rachel said more calmly, walking so close he could finally tell that she was translucent.

"Yes." Steve said, realizing the truth "I always will."

Rachel Grey reached up to remove the yellow protective glasses that served as her mask. Steve sighed at how beautiful she was. He hadn't had the opportunity to just look at her, appreciate her. Either that, or he had chosen not to. She smiled at him as if accepting a compliment, and his thoughts were probably transparent to her. Her felt her reach up and pull his own mask off.

"Why do you picture yourself in costume?" She asked.

"Uniform."

"Excuse me?"

"It's my uniform. Is that what it means? This is how I picture myself?"

"You can appear however you want. I wanted to appear like you." She said, indicating her own dress.

"I suppose that this is who I have been for long enough that no one else I was before matters." Steve admitted, "It is… easier to leave Steve Rogers behind and just be Captain America."

"In the shower… you tried to shove me out of your mind before it happened, but I felt it anyway." Rachel told him "Is it still happening?"

Cap nodded.

"Why does it happen?"

"I still don't know that."

"I could help you." She offered.

"I know that you could… but that isn't your responsibility."

"You don't have to go." She said.

"I do." He countered.

"I could come with you." She offered.

"Just what I need. Another teen sidekick." Cap griped, but immediately regretted saying it.

Rachel looked angry for a moment, but then looked down like a kid who got caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

"Why haven't you ever told anyone?" Rachel asked.

"Told them what?"

"Told them about Bucky."

If Cap had a chest, it probably would have constricted just then.

"You know?" Steve whispered.

"I saw." Rachel said.

Steve turned his back on her.

"I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. It is always right in back of your mind." Rachel said "You've been telling everybody your stories. Trying to feel better so that you can drive on with your mission, but you have withheld the one thing that is bothering you the most. The thing that has been driving you so hard. None of it was your fault, so why does it torment you so much?"

"I wasn't ready to tell it." Cap said with a sigh "There was nobody that I could trust."

He felt her insubstantial hands on his shoulders, and she turned him around to face her.

"You can trust me." Rachel said.

"I don't think that I can tell this story." Cap admitted.

"You don't have to." Rachel said "We can go back there… together… and try to make some sense out of it. Talk about it when it is over."

"So you just play ghost of Christmas past from the future? Does that make me Ebenezer or just an old geezer?" Cap asked wryly.

Rachel laughed at that.

"Something like that."

Cap thought about it and clenched his fists, but he had relived it so many times that one more surely wouldn't matter. It would hurt, but in the end it might help. He looked at her and nodded, and suddenly the mists around them coalesced into something else entirely.

* * *

April 15th 1945

Washington DC

The war was almost over.

Within a week the Soviets would reach Berlin, executing every German in a black uniform and raping every woman with blonde hair. In two weeks Mussolini and his family would be hanged, stoned, spit on, and torn apart by rabid Italian mobs. Namor the Sub Mariner would look on this scene and shake his head, unsurprised by what humanity was capable of. Only a few days after that Adolph Hitler would try to take his life and that of his mistress, unaware that his scientists had other plans for him. The Human Torch would burst in to that bunker, and ruin those plans, but would nonetheless become the first of the Invaders to fall in battle. A week after that German would unconditionally surrender, unleashing a worldwide celebration. It is common knowledge that Captain America was not around to witness these events. That he awoke still thinking that he was fighting the war, ignorant to the allied victory or how it was achieved. Common knowledge was wrong.

Steve Rogers watched the changing of the guard at the Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier. He was amazed at the precision and pageantry with which the guards marched back and forth, exactly 21 steps never missing a beat. During the changing of the guard it seemed as if the rifles defied gravity for a moment as the sergeant of the guard caught the whirling weapons to inspect them. Then it continued. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Rain, shine, snow, or storm. A hurricane had come through Virginia last year, but the Honor Guard had refused to leave their post in front of the Tomb. At the very least these men understood what honor meant. These were parade ground soldiers, without a doubt some of them senator's and congressmen's sons who had been drafted but who could not be risked on the battlefields of Europe and Asia. Even so, they showed a dedication and discipline that earned a modicum of respected from the super soldier that stood anonymously before them. Captain Steve Rogers stood in front of them in his Class A uniform with a black leather raincoat, but he was just one soldier among many. He had never had the opportunity to come to Arlington national cemetery before, or to see the changing of the guard. He had been ordered back from the battlegrounds of Europe to come to Washington DC, however, and could not miss this opportunity.

He closed his eyes, and exhaled deeply, as he heard another 21 gun salute.

Steve turned away from the Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier and walked in the direction of the cemetery proper. Not the sections where the Presidents and other politicians were buried, either. The gardens of stone where the soldiers, sailors, and marines rested. He walked through them, gently, careful not to tread on any of the graves even unintentionally. He looked left and right, seeing dozens of burials happening at the same time. Some were buried with Honors, some with Modified Honors, but all of them getting a send off befitting a hero. The Old Guard saw to that. It seemed as if every few minutes the air was split with another 21 shots, and Steve found himself flinching ever time. His body tightened, wanting to explode into motion with every shot. He ignored the compulsion, and continued his trek through the cemetery. There was a plot number that he had memorized, and thought of often in blazing heat and freezing cold.

He knew instantly when he was there.

_Franklin Alexander Rogers_

_US Navy_

_February 2nd, 1919 - Dec 7th 1941_

It seemed such a short epitaph to sum up the existence of his brother, who was so much more than just another sailor. At least to him. But this stand of marble columns was not known for its flowing scripts and pithy phrases. It was a utilitarian formation forever marking heroes a place among their peers, and real heroes did not brag about their accomplishments. Real heroes just got the job done, and went quietly to their rest. Steve looked down to all that was left of his brother, sorry that he had not come here before, or even been here for the funeral. He had done his best not to attend a funeral ever since his father's. Steve opened his mouth to say something, but was unsure what to say. Just like all of us, he had no idea if his brother could hear his words from a better place. All that he knew was that the words needed to be said.

"I wish that I could hear your voice one more time, Frankie. I wish that I knew if you ever forgave me for what happened to mom. I wish that I could have told you both that I was Captain America, and known what you thought about that. I wish that you were with me right now. I wish that all of you were. I guess that if wishes were fishes we'd all be fishing. It took me a long time to accept what happened. A long time and a lot of lives lost. I don't know how you would think about it, but I have seen so much sacrifice that I can't feel sorry for what happened to you anymore than I can feel sorry for the choices that I made. So many men have given up their lives all around me for an idea… more like an ideal… that none of them have ever known. They gave their lives for their country, but it isn't that simple. They haven't given their lives for what the country is, but rather for what it could be. What is should be. I made my choice a long time ago, but now I am too indebted to all of them to ever quit. I hope that you can understand."

He waited for a response, but knew that none was going to come.

"You said that the one place that you wanted to visit was France. You listened to all Dad's stories and wanted so much to see it, at least once, but you never docked there." Steve said "I know that you will never get the chance, so I brought France to you."

Steve pulled out the small tin of earth that he had scooped up on Omaha Beach. Earth bought so dearly with the lives of brave men. He had carried it with him ever since, hoping for this day to come. He opened the tin and placed it as the base of his brother's grave. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out a small bag of flower seeds that he had gotten in Italy and buried them in the tin with his fingers. Normally, the last step would be to add water. There was no need, though, because Steve's tears were doing that job just fine.

* * *

That afternoon Steve once again walked in the halls of power.

For some reason it did not seem as right this time as it had last time. General Marshall had not been there to meet him, and General Phillips was not by his side. More importantly, he was not going to see President Roosevelt. He was unsure how he would react to see the new President, and he was unsure what this man so desperately wanted to speak with him about that he had pulled him back from the borders of Germany. He had never had the opportunity to meet Vice President Truman even when he was a Senator. Unlike so many politicians of the day, the cantankerous man from Missouri had not gone out of his way to glad-hand the super soldier for a photo opportunity. He knew next to nothing about the man, but it seemed that fate was giving him a chance to find out everything he needed to know.

The White House page that was escorting him was a pimply faced kid with no idea of who he really was. As far as he was concerned, Captain Steven Rogers was just another soldier with far less rank than usually tooled around the Oval Office. It was strange, because the page seemed to be taking him in another direction than the one that led to the oval office. He was certain that was where he would want to meet. Then again, this was a new President. Steve found himself swallowing his anxiety. He had charged into battle a thousand times in his young life, and faced many greater challenged than this, but there was a unique gravity that came with meeting the President of the United States. They entered what appeared to be a sitting room, but it was so richly appointed that he could not imagine anyone sitting there.

Standing in the middle of the room, with his hands behind his back, was President Truman.

The old man looked up to him and flashed an instant smile. He did not look as physically wasted as FDR had seemed the last time he saw him, but nonetheless seemed to be carrying a great weight on his shoulders. He stood up straight nonetheless, and crossed the room to him with his hand extended. It was a shock to Steve, given the more formal introduction he had experienced before.

"So you're him." Truman said simply, shaking Steve's hand "I thought you'd be taller."

Steve didn't know what to say.

"You can go, Phil." Truman told the page.

"Sir…" Steve began, unsure whether to salute or go blind.

"Why don't you sit down, son." Truman insisted, and Steve took it as an order.

Truman sat in the chair opposite his and they looked at each other briefly. Truman seemed to be taking his measure and he knew that he was doing so as well. The situation was more awkward for being so casual, and Steve really didn't know how to proceed. For all he had experienced, he was still a young man who had been brought up to respect his elders. He just wished that the President would say something.

"You come from New York City, don't you son?" Truman finally said after clearing his throat.

"Yes sir."

"Then I suppose that you wouldn't know much about bailing hay." The President concluded.

It seemed a strange way to begin a conversation.

"Well, I had a bail of hay fall on me once on the farm. Anybody who ever has had that happen can tell you that's a crushing experience. Well… a couple of days ago here it seemed like all the planets fell down on me."

Steve found himself nodding, losing his military bearing at the sound of the President's words. He knew exactly how the man felt.

"The President would have wanted you to be here for the funeral. It is a shame that you couldn't make it." Truman said.

"You are the President, sir." Cap said, surprising even himself that he was correcting the man.

"So people keep telling me." Truman smiled without a hint of malice "I've only known one President, for a very long time. Just like the rest of the country."

Cap nodded again, because he also felt the exact same way.

"I never thought that I would have this job, but I should have expected it. Prepared myself. That is in the past, though. As long as I have this job, I might as well do the best job I can. That is why I wanted to talk to you today."

Steve was flabbergasted.

"I was a Captain once, too. In the first war. In France. Captain is a good rank to have, because you are still down there with the men. You can still see the battlefield and the consequences of decisions that are made so far away. I've heard everything that the Generals have to say, but it has been a long time since any of them saw a battlefield. Some of them have never even looked a Jap in the eye. That is why I want to hear what you have to say."

"I'm at your disposal, sir." Steve managed to say.

"What would you say… if I told you that the war could be over tomorrow?" The President asked softly.

"I wouldn't believe you." Steve said honestly.

The President smiled, and it seemed that he prized honesty.

"What if I told you that I could do it… I could get the Japanese to surrender without so much as one more American serviceman losing his life?" Truman asked again.

"How?" Steve said.

"I can't tell you that. What I really need to ask you… what I really need to know… is about the Japanese. You have fought them. You know them."

Steve nodded.

"If we invade the mainland… if Macarthur and his boys launch an assault that the Japs know that they have no hope of beating back… will they fight? Knowing what you know… will they surrender?" Truman asked seriously.

Steve was silent for a moment, but he knew what he had to say.

"When they run out of ships and planes, they will fight on land. When they run out of bullets, they will fight with sticks and stones. They believe that they are protected, as they have been throughout history, with a divine wind. They will fight to the last man, sir. They will never surrender." Steve spoke his mind, straight from his heart, with the relevance and respect that he held for his enemy. The respect that they had earned from him on the field of battle.

The two men sat in silence.

"I suppose that is what I needed to hear, son." Truman said, but Steve could not read the emotions that were in that voice. Disappointment? Satisfaction? Acceptance? All of those? It was impossible to tell.

"I just want to tell you how proud of you I am, son." Truman said "You should have heard the President talk about you. He talked about you the same way he talked about his own boys out fighting the war. You were his own personal New York boy out giving 'em hell, and nobody could tell him anything different."

Those kindly spoken words sunk a heavy weight into Steve's heart, and he could think of no words in response.

"Thank you sir." He finally said.

* * *

"That was all very enlightening, but what did any of that have to do with Bucky?" Rachel asked as the mists swirled around them again.

"Maybe nothing. Maybe everything." Steve said.

"I've told you, Steve. You are telling everyone about these things you have experienced all the while denying the one thing that is hurting you the most." Rachel said "You can be honest with me. I won't judge you, I promise. I wouldn't do anything to hurt you any more than I would hurt myself. You have to know this."

"I do." Steve sighed. "It's not easy to go back. It's not easy at all."

"Take my hand." Rachel said "I'll be right next to you the whole time.

Steve exhaled, wondering for a moment is this thought form was even breathing at all. He reached out and took her hand, and she smiled at him. She looked so happy, so totally lacking apprehension, that he couldn't help but feel a swell of courage. He wondered if it was always like this for her.

"It's different when it's love." She responded to his unspoken question.

* * *

May 8th, 1945

Paris had never seen such a party.

Steve's father had told him about the day he entered Paris in 1916 and was swarmed with a tide of desperate women who had not seen a young man in years. The young men of that French generation were either rotting in fields of freezing in trenches. Women he didn't know speaking a language he only marginally understood were swarming him and smothering him with kisses while he tried to march in formation. It was probably more love than a magnificent bastard like Jack Rogers would ever get for the rest of his life. This was entirely different, though. In the first war, Paris had been an observer, sending their soldiers to a front that never moved east or west. This time, when Paris got the word that Germany had unconditionally surrendered it was a miracle that it didn't burn to the ground. For someone had finally slain the monster that had conquered and terrorized them for far too long.

In time they would call this day V-E day, in the tradition of D Day and other days that were simply letters stamped in the collective mind of a generation. Today, they only thought to party. Streamers of white and blue swirled down from the tall buildings of the plaza as Steve watched the people of the city cheering parades and popping long-hidden bottles of champagne. Perfect strangers were hugging and kissing one another in the streets, a love fest unlike anything that Captain America had ever seen in his still young life. He only wished that he could share their jubilation and relief. The war, or at least his war, was not over. Japan was still waiting in the Pacific. Germany still needed to be occupied. It didn't matter what was put on paper, there was still battles to be fought and men would still be losing their lives. As long as that was the case, his mission was not accomplished.

He walked down the winding streets in uniform, accepting unsolicited kisses and handshakes from the men and women of Paris. Maybe he would have felt different if Peggy was here, but he had been informed that Peggy had been killed during the liberation of Paris. He would not know until years later that wasn't the case. He was melancholy, remembering all the stolen moments with her in the early days. All the secret missions in 1943. The days shortly after Normandy when they found each other in the chaos of the invasion. So much intrigue, romance, sweet seduction and thrilling adventures. All in the past, like everything he had ever cared about. The cruelest thing about love is that is doesn't last forever, and that all too often the length of life outdistances it by miles and decades.

Paris wasn't the same without her.

Steve was dressed in his army fatigues and had a pistol on his hip; decked out in full gear including a green duffel bag. It was required when traveling in France, which as recently as yesterday was considered a combat zone. Steve certainly wasn't dressed for a party, and hadn't been expecting one. He was here to find Bucky, because "Wild Bill" Donovan and the OSS had another mission for him. Even though the Third Reich was waving white flags in Munich didn't mean that a few, evil individuals capable of horrible and desperate acts had given up by any means. One such individual was waiting for him on a island fortress plotting one last strike against the United States, and with American forces spread so thin and overworked all over the world it was up to him to stop him. He had gotten word that Buck had fully recovered from the infected shrapnel wounds he received in March, and he wanted him at his side when he went after Baron Zemo.

The celebration ran around him like the river ran around a man standing in it. Despite limited familiarity with the layout of the city, Steve still knew exactly where he was going. He heard that many of the GIs that were spending their convalescence in Paris had taken over a run down hotel that the Germans had turned into a bordello. The women in it, now freed, had not necessarily seen any reason to change their profession. Evidently, attitudes and legal positions regarding the oldest of professions were not as negative in France as in the new world. Steve wasn't here to make moral judgments, because this was their country and they had fought just as hard as the allies to drive the Germans back to Berlin. He just wondered if Buck would be willing to leave when he found him.

Walking through the building that was not quite a brothel, Cap inhaled the half forgotten smell of passion. He heard the babbling of feminine French from behind one door that was interspersed with a masculine voice continuously affirming that - whatever she was doing - it was surely the right thing. Behind another he heard a sharp whip crack and a cry, but a similar affirmation. He had to subjugate his heroic impulse to break down the door and see what was wrong. People were strange sometimes, but they made certain common noises when they were having fun. When he got to the room number that matched the slip of paper that Dum Dum Dugan had given to him, Cap heard similar noises from behind that door as well. Cap smiled at that, because the boy sure had grown up through this war. He hoped that there was not interrupting something. It was against his better judgment, but he solidly knocked on the door. At the very least he could give Buck a warning, because this mission couldn't wait for anything.

Behind the door it sounded like there was a sudden ruckus.

"Who is it?" Bucky's irritated voice came through the door.

"Its just me, Steve." Cap said.

A whispered expletive did not escape Steve's keen hearing.

Suddenly a flare of flame was visible from the window at the end of the hall, and Steve heard cheers from the street below. He saw Toro, the Human Torch's partner, fly by the window wreathed in flames. He went to the window to wave to him, but Toro was really moving. In no time he was just a trail of flame heading down the street. He would have tried to yell at him out the window, but he was distracted as Bucky's door opened behind him.

"Uh…come on in." Bucky said awkwardly. The young man was wearing a pair of boxer shorts and looked confused. Cap could see the bright red scars from his wounds but it seemed as if they were healing nicely.

"I don't have to, Buck. I know that you've got a girl in there." Steve said with a smile that he tried to keep from being a smirk.

"You… do?" Bucky gulped.

"I've had a lot of bombs dropped on me, but I'm not… deaf… yet." Cap said, but something he saw distracted him from what he was saying.

There was one burnt, smoldering footprint permanently marring the ledge of the room's open window.

"Toro was in here with you?" Steve said in surprise as he pushed by Bucky, without thinking, to get a better look at the burnt footprint.

"I…" Bucky began, but couldn't finish.

"I didn't know that things were getting this wild around here." Steve said, scratching his head "Maybe it is a good thing that it is time to go after Baron Zemo. Idle hands seem to be the devil's workshop." Steve said in his best father voice.

"I…" Bucky gulped again.

"Don't worry about it, Buck. You're a man now. There's no need to…"

The realization hit him like a tidal wave.

"Where is the girl, Buck?" He asked in an even tone, as if there had to be a rational explanation.

Bucky just looked at him, his mouth moving.

"Where is she?" Steve asked more severely.

"I… tried to tell you, so many times." James Barnes finally croaked out, tears forming in his eyes.

Steve felt his blood turn to ice.

* * *

"No." Steve told Rachel, causing the entire seen to turn a blinding white and freeze in place.

"It's okay, Steve." Rachel told him soothingly.

"No! It's not okay! You can't see what happens next!" Steve yelled at her.

"But this next moment… it is the key to the whole thing! Can't you see that, Steve? It is like a mental brain tumor that is poisoning everything in your life! You have hidden it for so long, but you can't make it not have happened."

"Don't you think I know that? Do you think that I don't realize that every moment of the day?" Steve had finally discovered that his mental form could tremble, and he couldn't stop shaking. He had spent this entire day telling himself, over and over, that he did not care for this girl the way that she cared for him. He had almost convinced himself, but if that was so why was he so afraid to show her this? To show her the real him?

"You do care about me. " She told him as he cursed himself for letting her hear the thought "You care what I think, what I feel, and how I feel about you. You can't hide this from me anymore than I can hide it from you."

"You can't see this." Steve begged her.

"I won't judge you, Steve. Whatever you did, I've seen worse. So much worse."

Steve inhaled, held it until he couldn't hold it anymore, and slowly breathed out. He surmised that his mental form could breath as well as it could tremble. He couldn't look at her. The shame in his eyes was too great.

"You can trust me." Rachel insisted.

"I've loved Wanda for years, and trusted her with my life, but I could never trust her with this. No matter how close I felt to Rachel, I would never let her know this. I couldn't tell Bernie this, and I was going to marry her. Spend my life with her. How can I trust you, when we've just met?" Steve said this all slowly, reasonably.

They stood in silence for a moment.

"What does your heart tell you, Steve?"

He finally turned to meet her gaze, and he knew that she was right.

"All right." He capitulated "But don't say that I didn't warn you."

* * *

For many of us, we can conceive what was going through the mind of Steven Grant Rogers at that moment. None of us like to have a mirror held up to our prejudices, to see us when we are at our ugliest. Again, to understand, we would have to know the mind of a man of his time. A man raised in the early years of a young century in a young country. A man from 1945, who had spent the intervening years since his entry into manhood locked in a struggle against what many considered to be the invincible threat of fascism. What he considered to be pure evil. A struggle that allowed for no weakness, no compromise, and no division. No gray areas between what was right or what was wrong. Steven Rogers had always thought that he knew what was moral and what was immoral. Who was moral and who was immoral. Who he could trust and who he couldn't. His world, once again, and been toppled onto it's ear.

"Cap!" Bucky yelled as Steve rushed for the door. The Super Soldier was red in the face and his hands were clenched into fists.

"Shut up!" Steve growled, refusing to look at him.

"Please!" Bucky pleaded, grabbing his arm.

"Don't touch me!" Steve screamed, throwing him across the room with a brutal stiff arm. "Don't you dare touch me!"

Bucky leaned against the wall, shock and dismay in his eyes.

"It's still me, Steve." Bucky said "I haven't changed…"

"Yes you have!" Steve yelled "What about Jackie?"

"I was never with Jackie." Bucky admitted "That night… before Normandy… I was with Toro."

Steve's eyes bulged with rage "All this time… you've been lying to me all this time!"

"I wasn't… I didn't… I knew that you wouldn't understand!" Bucky barked in frustration "I'm not a boy anymore! Don't you understand that! I'm a man and I can make my own decisions!"

"You man not be a boy anymore… but you're not a man! "Steve screamed with white hot anger bubbling up from him. "You don't have any right to call yourself one!"

"Steve…"

"This partnership is over!" Steve screamed "I'm beginning to think that it never existed in the first place!"

"How could you say that!" Bucky screamed back "I've saved your life a thousand times! Just like you've saved mine!"

"You lied to me!"

"Like you never lied to anyone! Like you never had a secret! I helped you keep your secret! I helped you keep a hundred secrets!"

"That was different!" Steve yelled.

"How was it different? A lie is a lie, isn't it? I forgave you your lies! Why can't you forgive mine!"

"I'm done with you." Steve said "I can't even stand to look at you. I don't need you. I started this alone and I wish to God that I had kept it that way."

Steve stormed out of the room, out of the hallway, and out of the brothel. He ignored the cries behind him, ignored the spectators that had poked their head out of the doors to see that the fess was about, and pushed aside everyone that got in his way. As he pushed through the jubilant crowd, he felt not a bit of the joy that moved them. Because there was still a war on. He still had a mission. As long as he could focus on that mission, give over all his thoughts and all his heart to it, then nothing that happened could distress him. After all, the mission came first. Before friends, before family, and before love itself. Nothing that had happened in that horrible place mattered. The mission was all that mattered.

All that he had to do was tell himself that.

* * *

It was funny how the seeds of a single lie could grow into a great, towering tree of lies that dwarfed the mighty redwood and towered over everyone. It was funny how lies could mix with truth to become a new reality to those that the lie was told to. How things could make perfect sense, and yet be a complete lie for all the truth involved. He had been telling the lie for so many years that he thought it was the truth. Deep in his mind, he knew that it was not. It was this part of his mind that he and Rachel walked through. A familiar island, and a familiar peril, but one notable difference. Captain America, dressed not in fatigues but in his famous uniform, was strapped to the drone plane alone.

Steve had been so confident that he could defeat Zemo alone. Without the Invaders, and without Bucky. He had been mistaken, because he didn't know about Zemo's android. The android had been based on the designs of the Human Torch, yet had been blessed with superior strength and durability instead of the deadly flame powers that the Reich had come to fear. The first glimpse that he got of the robot had been when it smashed through that wall, and by then it was too late. A phenomenal blow to the head had knocked him out, and he still was woozy from the concussion.

Zemo was prancing and gamboling before him, bragging like a madman. That was unsurprising, because he was a madman. Steve was not listening to a single word he had to say, because he had heard it all before. All villains bragged about the same things, and at times it got boring no matter how much peril was involved. He had almost been lowered into a vat of molten steel once, and compared to that being strapped to a plane didn't seem nearly as serious. Just as he wasn't listening, he wasn't bothering to dignify his comments with a response. He had found that the villains found it more disturbing when he didn't say a thing than when he responded with defiant bravado. Telling them that they would never get away with it (which they never did) didn't pack quite the punch. His silent glare, and an occasional spit in the eye, spoke a thousand words.

"Do you not see the irony Captain?" Zemo finally asked "You, who were to be the weapon that brought down the Reich, will instead be the weapon that destroys your White House… and everyone in it!"

Cap watched him walk off with his robot, cackling all the way.

_Good riddance._ Steve thought _At least now I can hear myself think._

But what was there to think about? Either he would live or he would die, and he had faced his own mortality so many times in the last few years that it hardly terrified him the way that it had in the beginning. The only thought in his mind was that he needed to stop this plane from reaching its destination, because there were other lives more important than his on the line. Lives that he had sworn to protect. He refused to fail in this. So that was why, although his face seemed without expression, his corded muscles were continuously straining and relaxing against the chains that held him in place. He knew that the chains could not be broken, but that did not mean that he could not slip out of them. Harry Houdini had known well how much easier it was to slip out of chains than it was to escape ropes. Especially when you were naked and wet. Since he was neither, it would be more difficult, but he had to try.

"Need a hand, partner?" A familiar and unexpected voice said from beneath the plane.

Cap was too stunned to even respond.

"What are the odds that a nut like Zemo would leave a pair of bolt cutters in the next room from where he shackled you to a plane?" He heard Bucky say from beneath the plane as the chains began moving.

There was a sound of strain and a resounding snap as the chains fell away. Steve slid down the plane, trying to land on his feet, but his legs had fallen asleep and he hit the floor like a scarecrow that had fallen from its post. Steve was so embarrassed that he didn't even want to open his eyes as he felt strong hands help him to his feet. When he finally did, Bucky came into focus, looking his normally strong, confident self.

"Why are you looking at me like that? Did you really think that I was going to let you have all the fun this time?"

"Who told you I was here?" Cap rasped, suddenly realizing how thirsty he was. Being in a death trap was thirsty work.

"Wild Bill Donovan." Buck said with a quasi-facetious tone and a smirk "He talks in his sleep."

Cap's frown was so deep the hard lines almost cut his face.

"I'm just kidding!" Buck laughed, throwing his hands up in surrender.

"We'll talk about this later." Cap said sternly, kicking his legs to help the blood flow back into them "Right now… the mission comes first."

"You're welcome by the way." Buck sighed as they ran in the direction of Zemo's lab.

A pair of red, white, and blue hurricanes tore through the ranks of Zemo's mercenaries as if they were not even there. Even though Cap did not have his shield, which Zemo had taken as a trophy, he was still more than a match for the thugs that worked for the Nazi scientist. Zemo's own arrogance he been his undoing in this instance, because he insisted on his troops overpowering the patriotic duo and binding them back to the plane. That would never happen in this lifetime. Bucky's years of experience in hand to hand combat were nearly as all-inclusive as Cap's at that point in time, and he easily blocked every blow and counter punched almost as quickly as the super soldier. His devastating kicks always landed on the most vulnerable parts of his foe's anatomy; such as the groin, diaphragm, and throat. Not one of them got up after he knocked them down. Cap let loose a roar of rage as he picked up one charging soldier and spun in a circle, hurling him like an Olympic hammer-thrower into the gaping expressions of five unlucky thugs. Another one he lifted as easily as an infant and pile-drove him into the ground. He was being uncharacteristically brutal, because his heart was a tempest of anger and resentment for the partner that had saved his life.

"Seize them!" The Nazi shouted "Do I need to do everything myself?"

When the last of the troops had either fallen or fled, Zemo stood quaking on the podium where he had been observing it all. His rage was evident even through the mask that was eternally glued to his face.

"Fine then!" Zemo squalled petulantly "I will crush you to paste underneath the fists of my invincible android!"

The hulking android stomped forth, each footfall causing the ground underneath their feet to tremble.

"Uh… Cap?" Bucky asked "What now?"

Cap only slightly nodded his head to the right, indicating that Bucky should run around to flank the mechanical beast. Make it have to choose its target as Cap circled it to its left. His partner instantly picked up on the strategy, having fought by the man's side long enough to instinctively know his mind. As they leapt into action the Android's metal head swiveled between them, hopelessly confused.

"You stupid bucket of bolts!" Zemo shouted, "Attack!"

Cap exploded into action, doing a hand-spring off of the Robot's head. It was a feat of acrobatics that surprised even Bucky. Especially when he landed right next to him.

"Cap!" Bucky gasped, "I thought…"

"Don't move until I tell you…" Cap whispered as the android charged.

"Cap…" Bucky said through one side of his mouth as Steve stared down the oncoming engine of destruction.

"Now!" Steve yelled, and both he and Bucky leapt out of the way.

By the time that the Android saw the gaping window, it was too late. Cap somersaulted behind it and unloaded a powerful kick to the lower back that would have snapped a man's spine. He heard mechanical mechanisms grind and snap before the android toppled out the huge window. He watched with satisfaction as the mechanical monster plunged twelve hundred feet to his doom on the sharp rocks below. He slowly turned to Zemo, and say that the mad scientist was not longer quaking with rage. He was rigid with shock and fear.

"No more soldiers. No more robots. No more death traps." Cap said as he slowly advanced on Heinrich Zemo.

"_Nein! Nein! Verndammt Amerikaner!"_ Zemo shouted as he backpedaled, no longer even making a pretense of being in control.

"It's just you and me." Steve Rogers said from behind Captain America's mask as the scientist was fixated on a pair of narrowed blue eyes that promised pain.

"_NEIN!"_ Zemo shouted again, hurling the shield that he had been keeping as a trophy. It wobbled badly and Cap simply snatched it from the air as easily as he would have when it was returning to him.

Zemo took off at a full run, but they both knew that Captain America could run faster. This day, however, fate was on Zemo's side.

"Cap!" Bucky shouted from behind him before he could pursue the Nazi "That plane is starting up by itself!"

Cap looked back to the runway with horror, and saw that Bucky was right.

"We have to stop it!" Cap shouted, "It's loaded with explosives and headed for the White House!"

"We'll never reach it in time! It's already moving!" Bucky screamed as they ran.

"Look! A motorcycle!" Cap yelled, indicating an old German motel leaning on it's kickstand.

"Already on it!" Bucky yelled, jumping on the bike and turning it over. Cap didn't even think before jumping into place behind him.

"Lets do it!" Steve yelled as Bucky peeled out.

They tore down the runway with speed that made their lips flap and their eyelids peel back, but they were barely gaining on the aircraft as it made its own way down the tarmac. Their hearts hammered as they saw the wheels raising up off the ground. They both knew that they were running out of runway, and there would only get one chance. As the aircraft finally took off, the runway ended in a cliff that plunged down to the churning waves of the Atlantic ocean. The motorcycle seemed to take flight itself for a moment as Bucky jumped it off the cliff, and the two adventurers leapt from the spinning wheels. It was as if, for a moment, they defied gravity as they hung between the bike and the plane. Then reality came crashing down. Bucky hit the tail assembly so hard that his ribs splintered, blood exploding from his mouth as one jagged rib punctured his lung. Cap would have plunged to his death if he had not been a Super Solder, with reaction speed capable of insuring an impossible grab on the tail fin. Steve threw his other arm around the fin, but he knew that even his strength wasn't going to be enough to help him hold on.

"Pull me up! Buck! Pull me up!" Steve yelled.

Bucky, in incredible pain, pulled himself hand over hand down the tail fin to where the explosives were bolted.

"Pull me up, Buck! I can help you disarm it" Steve yelled again, not knowing if Bucky heard him.

What Steve Rogers didn't know, but he would figure out in the long years ahead of him, was that James Buchanan Barnes knew exactly what he was doing. That he saw the mess of wires and knew that he could disarm it. That he looked down to the ocean waves, and saw that a plunge from this height would not be lethal. That he knew that, even if they disarmed the bomb, the plane's collision with the White house would be. That people would die if this plane ever reached its goal. That he had learned enough about disarming bombs from Steve that he also knew how to make them explode.

"I'm… losing… my grip!" Steve shouted as he began to slide off the tailfin. "Pull me up!"

"Not today, Partner!" Bucky said, echoing words from long ago "When this is over I'm going to have to face the music, and I'm not going to let you swing with me!"

"Bucky…" Cap stammered, his eyes meeting the sadly knowing eyes of his partner for one last time. His fingers slipping from the second to the third knuckles on the tail fin. He could never forget the next words he heard, so different from what he had told the Avengers he heard.

"I love you Steve!" Bucky yelled as the super-soldier's grip finally slipped free.

Suspended in mid air, suspended in time, Steve reached with all of his might for the plane that rapidly left him behind. Nothing mattered except that young man that was fatalistically pulling wires, giving his own life to save the lives of others. At that moment, he would have given anything to be able to fly. He would have given his uniform, his country, and his very soul to take Bucky's place. But even as he fell, he knew that he couldn't. Steve Rogers learned that a man couldn't fly when he was 10 years old. The plane continued its flight, he continued his decent, and then the heaven's were lighted by a second sun. The explosion that consumed the aircraft burned the shape of the plane into his retinas. Steve didn't even have a chance to scream his name before he crashed into the icy waves below.

Then all was dark.

* * *

"I've… always been the most honest of men." Steve said to Rachel, his memories swirling into white mist once again "I have no idea why I lied about this."

"It was private. It was personal. It… wasn't your secret." Rachel told him.

"It was. I made it my secret." Cap said.

"Why?"

"Because I never told him… I never told him that I loved him too. Maybe not the way he did… but I loved him too." Steve said, his pain escaping with every word.

"He knew." Rachel Grey assured him "He knew… or he never would have made the choice he did.

They took each other in their insubstantial arms, and Steve suddenly felt as if he was surrounded by a golden glow. There was something here, between the two of them, that he could not deny no matter how much he wanted to.

"Bucky forgave you. It is up to you to forgive him… and to forgive yourself." Rachel told him, every word seeming to reverberate in his head the way that there always did when they were touching.

"I don't think that I can." Steve said "I don't think I can at all."

They were silent for a moment, regarding each other. They had shared so much in such a short time, and yet they both knew that they were simply scratching the surface.

"I know… that you can't love me the way that I love you either." Rachel said "At least not yet. You've lost so much that you can't let yourself fall that easily."

"I'm sorry." Steve said.

"You don't have to be. You'll come around." Rachel stated wryly.

"You… sound pretty confident about that." Steve responded with a raised eyebrow.

"I am."

"Do you know something that I don't?"

"Maybe. Coming from the future has its advantages as well as its drawbacks." Rachel said with a coy roll of her eyes.

"Say no more." Cap said "Sometimes I like a surprise now and then."

She just smiled at him.

"Maybe you should just say what you have to say." She said.

"I don't want to." He said

"I know you don't." She said.

"I have to go. I have a mission."

"Don't we all." Rachel said, everything becoming hazy.

"Goodbye, Rachel Grey." Steve said.

"I don't believe in goodbyes, Steve Rogers." Rachel said, fading away.

* * *

Other faces began to take shape in Steve's vision. These were the X-men in the true masculine sense, standing in front of Steve Rogers' immobile form. He stood rigidly, almost at attention, and stared right through them.

"Whoa!" Bobby Drake said, waving his hand in front of Steve's face "He is totally gone! Twilight Zone, baby!"

"Who do you think it is?" Warren asked "Betsy? Emma?"

"Rachel." Everybody else said at the same time.

Cyclops muttered something unintelligible, his arms crossed across his chest and his teeth audibly grinding together.

The three of them were joined by Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Havoc, and Colossus.

"Maybe he can fill out the team and we can go four on four." Alex suggested with a shrug as he patted a football. "It looks like he is coming out of it."

"That is the worst idea in the history of bad ideas." Angel whispered, elbowing Scott's brother with his hollow-boned elbow as he looked at the way the other Summers was scowling.

Steve shook his head. "Sorry gentlemen… I'll have to take a rain check."

"It speaks." Wolverine said flatly.

"Are you alright, man?" Iceman asked "You look like your dog just got ran over… by a steamroller!"

"I'll be all right. Just visiting some old ghosts." Cap shrugged.

"So where are you off to?" Scott asked with a surprising lack of ice in his tone.

"Its time for this Avenger to do some avenging." Cap said, perhaps a little more harshly than he intended.

"You need any help?" Logan offered.

"I can handle it, thank you." Steve responded with a brief nod, which Logan returned. To the others it seemed like a pair of Samurai bowing before a fight.

With that, Steve Rogers walked away from the X-mansion. So much had happened since he arrived he questioned the wisdom of coming here at all. He had wanted to resolve issues, and instead had created new ones. They would have to wait for another day… another time… because out there somewhere was an evil man. He had learned the hard way over the years that the only thing required for evil to triumph was for good men to do nothing. He would not stand idly by while this happened. Once he was outside the gates he pulled his satellite phone out of his portfolio case. He would have to make a call to the Cab company, but first he had a more important call to make.

"Hello."

"Sam? It's Steve." He said simply.

"Is it that time again?" Falcon said.

"Yes it is."

"I'll meet you in the park. We're gonna get that bastard."

The phone hung up, because there was nothing left to say. Just like James, Sam Wilson knew him and how he operated well enough that words were often a waste of time. He momentarily wondered if he shouldn't have called him, but he pushed the thought away. He had needed to learn the hard way that no matter how good he was, no matter how hard he trained, he would always need someone to watch his back. James Buchanan Barnes had died trying to teach him that, and he learned that lesson well. He didn't know why he had held in Bucky's secret for so long. Rachel was the only soul that he had ever told. HE didn't know that any more than he knew why he had never told anyone that he didn't go into suspended animation when he hit those waves.

May in Chesapeake Bay was not nearly that cold.

* * *

_Live by the sword, die by the sword. _

Dane Whitman knew well the perennial maxim of irony that had been handed down from generation to generation, and it was further ironic to be so well known in a day and age where swords were beyond obsolescence. He appreciated irony, and he appreciated the contradictions of life. For Dane Whitman, the Black Knight, was a walking contradiction. A thoroughly modern man, and a finely trained analytical scientist, charging like Don Quixote to fight the evils of the world with tactics of combat that had been abandoned in a century when the bulk of humanity still believed in a flat world and was ignorant to the concept of gravity. There was a time when he would have scoffed at the possibility of the experiences that shaped his life. Interstellar travel, time travel, magic most of all. Then he had inherited a "magic sword" from his uncle, assumed Nathan Garrett's costumed persona, and once again brought to the world a legend that had been passed down through the ages since Sir Percy of Scandia first lifted the ebony blade.

He walked down the hallways of Avengers mansion and breathed deeply. It was as if you could smell the very essence of heroism in these halls. He had felt this way nowhere else save the halls of Camelot, and he was so glad that he had at last returned… even though it had taken such a tragedy to assure it. He had long ago lost the ebony blade that had earned him a place amidst earth's mightiest heroes. He had forsaken the magical arms and armor that the spirits of lost Camelot had given him for a time, for they did not feel right somehow. He wore micro mail armor developed by stark industries, rode an "atomic steed" captured from the High Evolutionary, carried a shield forged for him from the Vibranarium alloy mined in the Black Panther's land of Wakanda, and wielded a technologically enhanced sword that had been handed down to him by the first Avenger to die in battle. The Swordsman that he had met was not that man, specifically, but rather a much better man from a distant reality. Just as he had seen himself, more darkly reflected, in the monster that called himself Proctor.

Although his family curse that the blade brought had long ago been lifted from him, Dane had found that genetics could be as puzzling a thing as magic. He was no longer satisfied with test tubes, Bunsen burners, and periodic tables. It was as if that warrior ethos that had been forgotten by a cynical modern age had been passed down to him in his blood. He could no more stop his own crusade than he could give up his life. He had no great wrong in his life to avenge, nor a cause that obsessed him in his waking moments. Dane Whitman, for better or worse, had simply been born to battle. Bred for combat, and deep within his soul was a spark of that nobility that had been forgotten. What nobility had always been meant to be before syphilitic madmen and hemophiliac weaklings had usurped it. The code of chivalry reverberated in his veins as much as it did in his thoughts. Regard battle as the flowering of manhood. Slay those that oppose your noble cause. Do not associate with those that are lowly and ignoble. Earn respect. Demand obedience. Chose death before dishonor. He could no more deny these truths to himself than he could return to his laboratory.

What was a knight, modern or not, without a disdainful lady to love - purely and chastely - from afar?

Dane instantly knew that something was wrong when he saw Janet. The Wasp would ever be his unattainable personification of the feminine mystique, yet he did not let his impure lust - or the soaring feeling in his heart every time he saw her - blind him to the fact that something was tearing her apart. It was as clear as day on her face. Like any knight worthy of his name, Black Knight felt compelled to leap to the rescue.

"Jan… what's wrong?" Dane asked with sincere compassion.

"Dane… I didn't mean to run into you like this…" Jan said, seemed to consider saying something, then just shook her head.

"Are you still upset about what happened to the Hellicarrier?" Black Knight asked, remembering very well the indescribable carnage of the previous day.

"Yes… but it isn't that…" Jan sighed "It is just… we need to find Cap."

"Why? At the hospital he made it very clear that he wasn't going to come back, and I agree with his reasons." Dane understood very well the code of honor that Captain America lived by, and knew that were their situations reversed he would expect Steve to honor his wishes.

"I knew something… I know something… that he needs to know. His life could depend on it, and I should have told him. I should have told you all. Daredevil is scouring the streets for Cap, but I need to talk to Wendell. Steve told him where he was going to go next, even though he refuses to tell us. I need to make him see how important this is."

"What is it, Janet?" Dane asked gravely "What have you been keeping from us?"

Jan just clamped her hand over her mouth and shook her head. When the tears began flowing down her cheeks, he knew that it had to be something terrible. When she finally told him, he was shocked. Disbelief clamped down on his mind. It just couldn't be true. He understood perfectly why she had kept it from them. His own feelings forgotten, Dane Whitman took Janet Van Dyne in his chain mailed arms and held her tightly as she cried. He was not being a jilted paramour seeking opportunity in vulnerability, or even a chivalrous knight seeking to comfort for the sake of his own noble code. He was only being what she needed the most at that moment… a friend.

_Live by the sword, die by the sword _he thought sadly.

**Next: A brief interlude before… To End All Wars**

**The action packed finale to Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty!**

**Who will live? Who will die? Will I ever meet my deadline?**

**Tune in next week True Believers!**


	20. In final battle

**Author's notes: Thank you to everybody who is still reading this story! The length of time between updates has been nauseating, but thank you all for waiting. Excuses are like bungholes, so I will not waste your time with them, but I would simply wish to thank all the readers for their patience and their perseverance. Enjoy.**

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Chapter Eighteen: In final battle**

**Mount Sinai Medical Center**

The Fantastic Four were a little different.

Nobody really knew what it was about them that, even in a world of marvels, so totally put them apart from every other bunch of costumed superhumans that wanted to put on a pair of tights. It certainly wasn't their might, as was the case in the Avengers. They were the first heroes to publicly appear after a long hiatus following the golden age of heroes which was brought to an end in the 1950's. I wasn't really that, either, because everyone knew that being the first did not necessarily make you the greatest. Maybe it was that everybody knew their real names and always had. It gave them a level of public trust that no other team could hope to match so long as they concealed their identities. Reed, Johnny, Ben, and Sue… the world was on a first name basis with them. More than any other team in existence, they were a family. They lived as a family, and they fought as a family.

Even when they were fighting with each other.

"You punk! You flaming little weasel!" Ben Grimm roared at the cackling Human Torch as Johnny Storm flew circles around him.

"I didn't mean anything by it, Ben!" Johnny laughed, sounding bereft of remorse despite his words.

"You get your burning butt down here sos I can feed you a knuckle sandwich!" The Thing roared.

"All I was saying is that you should have stuck with professional wrestling! It's more of a freak show than ever, and with you in the tights again every night would be a sell out!"

"Who're YOU calling a freak you blazing dweeb! Get down her sos Aunt Petunia's ever loving blue eyed nephew can wash yer mouth out with my fist!"

"Honestly, Grimm! Nobody says dweeb anymore… and did you just refer to yourself in the fourth person?"

"I'll murderize ya!"

"Johnny! Ben! What do you think you are doing!" Sue screamed when she saw the two running rings around the waiting room "This is a hospital!"

"Good! Then yer little bro won't have a long trip when I get done with him!"

To an outside observer, the squabbling would have come crashing to a halt when both the Thing and the Torch seemed to collide with thin air that had suddenly become not so thin.

"Hey!" The Torch yelled, sounding a little muffled inside his invisible globe. He extinguished himself, knowing from experience how swiftly his flame powers consumed oxygen inside Sue's airtight force fields.

"Let me out, Susie!" The Thing bellowed, pounding with futility on the unyielding wall of invisible force.

"This isn't about you!" Sue hissed, standing between them . It was an enormous strain holding them both, but she was glad to do it under the circumstances. "This is about Nick. Reed is here to help him and you two are making us look like complete Jackasses."

"We? Rockpile was the one who…"

"Zip it, Johnny. I don't want to hear it." Sue said.

"Fine. I'll drop it, then." The Thing grumbled "For now. Just out of respect fer Nick."

"Thank you for being the bigger man, Ben." Sue said, releasing them from her force field.

Just then a very distracted looking Reed Richards walked into the room with a pencil clenched in his teeth and a huge trail of old fashioned dot matrix printer paper trailing him like a bridal train as he walked. His brows were knit together and he looked like he was about to bite through the pencil.

"How is he, Stretch?" Ben was the first to ask.

"Not good. Not good at all." Reed said as he scratched his head, sticking his pencil behind his ear "Whoever formulated the concoction that the terrorists injected him with was a biochemist I hold in the highest regard… purely professionally speaking of course. There are not many who would have thought to counter complex strings of metaproteins by overbalancing the amino acids with a series of Turin Strings and Glucomine base. It is so simple!"

The other three just stared and nodded, as they had learned to do through their many years living with the smartest man on the planet.

"That is the problem. It is simple yet effective." Reed acknowledged "I don't see how we can do anything to reverse what was done. It is all that we could do to stop the damage that had already been done and reduce the aging process to a more natural level. He might have lost twenty years of his life in the last two days."

"Oh God." Susan Richards gasped.

"Sounds to me like it was the work of the other guy." the Thing muttered.

"Is he going to be ok?" Johnny asked.

"It depends on your definition. He has lived for the last fifty years without aging a day… there is no way to predict what a shock to his system like this could mean for his overall health."

"The only question I got is where is the rat bastard that did this, and when am I going to get my orange mitts on him?" Ben Grimm said.

"There is another Doctor on that case." The aptly named Mister Fantastic told them "My job is to keep this patient alive."

* * *

**Off the Coast of Long Island**

As one door closes, another one opens. As one life ends, another one begins. This was the way of the universe in the mind of Mark Milton… or the man who thought of himself as Mark Milton. It is easy, of course, to believe that anything is possible when you can fly, break steel with your bare hands, and perform innumerous impossible feats with ease. What is not so easy is accepting that you have limitations, and that was what was the worst part for him. Looking down at the ashes that were being scattered over the waves in the wake of the yacht, he could not accept the fact that he would never see Kingsley Rice again. He was unsure what the man was to him. Hyperion was not a man who could claim a single being on this world as a friend. If there could be such a being, however, he would have liked to count the Canadian mutant among them. As he would like to count all of the members of the alliance that was referred to as the Sinister Syndicate.

They were all out of their garish uniforms now, and for the most part dressed in appropriate funeral attire. The exception was Doctor Spectrum, who looked like he had raided Huggy Bear's wardrobe for a suit to wear to the funeral. Jennifer Kale looked far too yummy in the black dress she was wearing, and he momentarily sighed when he thought of how she had come to him for comfort last night. Despite her ardor there was nothing that he could do for her, and she had left him unsatisfied and obviously embarrassed by her foolishness. She had not talked to him today, and he did not blame her because he shared her embarrassment. He had played a game with her and led her to believe that something that could never be was possible. It was not unlike the game that Zarda had played with him. The only difference was that he had been as physically unavailable for her as he was emotionally.

"This is so messed up." Speed Demon told him "The bastard didn't even show up."

"I didn't expect him to." Hyperion said softly, looking over the rail to the last trace of the ashes.

"Yeah… his precious secret identity." Doctor Spectrum snorted.

Mark looked to the three of them reflected in the water and saw them as it was at the beginning. He had memories of those days even though he had not physically lived them, and he had often wondered how that was possible. The three of them as they stood on the boat… and one other.

"This last one… the job that got Rice…it was too big. Too much." Hyperion told the other two, flashing a surreptitious glance to the other members of the Syndicate to make certain they were not close enough to hear.

"What do you mean?" Speed Demon asked.

"Too messy. Too many bodies." Hyperion said, sincerely hoping that he was not sounding regretful or squeamish "You don't punch someone like SHIELD in the mouth and expect to walk away clean."

"None of us are clean anyway." Spectrum muttered "Dirty as the day is long. Always have been and always will be."

"I'm not afraid." Speed Demon snorted "We totally hammered their asses. They won't come after us if they know what's good for them."

"Considering their line of work, I really don't think that they do." Hyperion grumbled.

The superhuman watched the mortal remains of Kingsley Rice sail away on the wind, his enhanced sense of sight seeing the particles of ash swirling in the wind long after they had diffused too far for the human eye to see them. There was something that he could not see, even though it was looking him right in the eyes. It could see him, however. Oh yes… it could see them all. For the life of him, Hyperion could not understand why he felt a chill running down his spine like the icy fingers of a playful child. Something was very wrong, he knew… but he just did not know what it was.

**

* * *

**

Westchester

"Intruder alert!" Iceman yelled, running out of the electronic monitoring system room that controlled most of the mansion's security measures. He realized that nobody was there to hear him, however, and hauled ass to the teacher's lounge, where there was certain to be somebody. He was cursing under his breath like Popeye the Sailor man down the entire length of the hallway. Warren was supposed to be monitoring the equipment, but when Bobby had tried to bring him a cup of coffee it was empty as a tomb with beeping alerts going off everywhere. The aircraft that was approaching was already over the fence and seemed to be on the verge of landing. There was no way that they should have ever gotten this close.

Iceman busted into the room, seeing Hank and Nightcrawler reading books of a very high page count while playing chess with their toes. Havok and Psylocke seemed to be playing a particularly competitive game of ping pong while Rogue and Storm watched TV. Unwinding in such a fashion after a long day of teaching was not uncommon.

"Intruder alert!" Iceman managed to choke out of his heaving chest.

"Who is it?" Storm's voice boomed as she erupted to her feet.

"Wouldn't… believe me… if I told you."

Storm had thought that she had seen everything in her time as an X-men, and to a large degree that was true. That was before she saw the sight that greeted her as she stared out the window of the rec room. The silver bird, gleaming in the sunshine, settled into what remained of the mostly melted snow of the school's lawn. She did not have to guess who it was, for even if the telltale shape of the aircraft was not a dead giveaway… the huge A on the tailfin of the Quinjet was.

**

* * *

**

Brooklyn

Steve Rogers waited patiently, tapping his foot in time to a cadence that only he could hear. It seemed like he had been sitting her for a month, waiting for something to happen, but in that indeterminable amount of time he had been given time to think, time to breathe, and time to consider his next move. In that sense, he was glad that his faithful tailor/dry cleaner was taking so long to retrieve his uniform from the back room. It was not easy to be patient, but when it came down to it there were few men better at that than Steve Rogers. It took patience to make fighting men out of clowns like Hawkeye and Quicksilver, or women warriors out of princesses like Crystal and Patsy Walker. Compared to that, waiting for your dry cleaning was a piece of cake.

"Here it is!" The man with the graying temples sighed in relief as he came back from behind the curtain "You wouldn't believe where it was filed away… honestly… who confuses a C with an R?"

Steve didn't even bother to ask whether the man filed his uniform under his real name or his more well known persona. It was none of his business, really, despite his curiosity.

"Thank you, sir." Cap said.

"How many times do I need to ask you not to call me sir?" The dry cleaner sighed "It always makes me want to call you sir! How many years do we know each other?"

"I apologize. I'll try to remember that in the future." Steve said politely, although he was so distracted by his thoughts that he almost let the comment pass without a response.

"There's something on your mind." The dry cleaner observed, knitting his brows together as he regarded the super soldier before him.

"There always is." Cap responded.

"Not like this time. This time it is really weighing on your mind." The man said as he began to remove the uniform from the plastic bag it was wrapped in. "I can see it on your face, clear as day. What is it, if you don't mind me asking?"

"It is… a lot of things." Cap admitted.

"Is this one of them?" The dry cleaner asked as he held up a familiar diamond ring.

Cap's eyes widened in surprise.

"I'll bet that you hadn't even noticed it was missing." The old man smiled.

"Where did you get that?" Cap asked.

"I found it in the pocket… you know… the one that isn't supposed to be there."

Steve remembered that he had put the ring in the little inner pocket that he had sewn over his heart, so he would not forget it. How ironic that he had done just that. He looked at the ring as the old man dropped it into his palm.

"You really should be more careful. It is a nice rock on that ring and you're lucky that I'm an honest man."

"Luck has nothing to do with it. That's why I chose you in the first place." Cap assured him as he regarded the ring in his palm.

"Not because I'm discreet?"

"Discretion is easy to find… honesty is a little tougher." Steve said as he closed his fist over the ring. "What day is it?"

"The seventh. February"

Steve just nodded, a little sadly.

The dry cleaner held up the unwrapped uniform for his inspection, and he had done an outstanding job as usual. It could not be easy to clean and repair any garment in the state that he had turned it in to this man, much less one as unique in composition. He had always made it look easy, though. The uniform looked as fresh as the day Tony had handed it to him.

"You know, I can't help but stare at it every time I get the chance to hold it." the dry cleaner said "It is a hell of a suit to wear to work, huh?"

Cap gently took the hanger from the man's fingers.

"There isn't another one like it." Steve said.

"You got that right." A rough voice said from behind him.

Sam Wilson had come in fully dressed as the Falcon, and when the dry cleaner saw this his face sagged so much it looked like it was going to fall off his skull.

"C'mon, Sam." The old man groaned "I don't ask for much… only that you long underwear types don't come through the front door in the drag!"

"Drag?" Sam asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Just use the back door next time… please? Even Spider-man uses the skylight."

"Hmmm. That tops my list of things that I didn't need to know." Sam shrugged.

"Are you sure that this putz is your partner?" The dry cleaner thumbed the Falcon.

"The one and only." Steve insisted.

"You better get suited up." Sam said "Time's a wasting. We have a lot of heads to crack before sunrise, so we better get cracking before sunset."

"If you don't mind Sam… we have a stop to make first." Steve said.

"What for?" Sam asked, scratching his head.

"To keep a promise." Steve said softly.

**

* * *

**

Long Island

"Promises, promises…" Black Eagle said to Golden Archer's thinly veiled threat.

As the assembled Sinister Syndicate disembarked from a luxury craft that had become nothing more than a gilded hearse, they were not lucky enough to leave the dark cloud hovering over them behind. Whatever doubt, negativity, or loss they felt with the death of one of their own was not easily exorcized by returning the Amphibian's remains to the sea he loved. Rather, they had been breaking the tension by sniping at each other like divorcees forced to go on a long road trip together. Hyperion was getting sick of listening to it and was pondering who to cremate with his radioactive vision in order to make an example and shut the others up. He was finding it hard not to stare at Golden Archer, who had no powers but made up for it by being a very unpleasant person.

_His arrows would make good kindling, and he would make handsome pile of ash. _Hyperion mused as he glared at the arrogant archer.

He was the first to realize what was happening, for his senses far outstripped the rest of them. He could hear the beat of a hummingbird's wings over a mile away. The whistling in his ears was like a falling bomb in a Warner brother's cartoon, and made his head snap up to regard the falling object a fraction of a second before he exploded into motion. Without even thinking he grabbed Jennifer Kale in one arm and Golden archer in the other, protecting the most vulnerable members of the syndicate with his own invulnerable body as he flew them off the dock. He shouted a hypersonic warning that only Speed Demon could understand, hoping that he could grab the others. The dock exploded into a mushroom cloud of splinters as a green streak barreled into it. Speed demon barely missed being sunk, but Power princess, Black Eagle, and Dr Spectrum were thrown into the murky water.

"What the hell was that!" Golden Archer screamed as Hyperion released him onto the shore.

"I… I think that I know…" Jennifer Kale groaned.

Hyperion did. Even before the ugly, green visage waded forth from the remnants of the shattered dock he knew… and he knew what he would have to do.

"HULK… WILL… SMASH!" The terrifying mountainous creature bellowed, stretching to a height that towered over the mightiest of the Syndicate.

"Beast!" Hyperion hollered, unleashing a bolt of atomic heat from his eyes that would fuse sand into glass, but only sizzled on the chest of the green behemoth, causing him to roar in anger and a visible swell in his musculature.

Two huge green fists collided with the ground; jarring soil loose for a half mile, causing a tidal wave, and catapulting the trio into the air.

Speed Demon looked on from the yacht with wide eyes, and his distraction was almost his undoing.

"Its… the Hulk! The Goddamn HULK!" The criminal speedster sputtered as the yacht was carried away by the tidal wave.

He realized something was wrong when the boat was suddenly wrenched free from the surface of the water, letting the wave continue on and forcing him to grab the railing for stability.

"What in the name of…" He screamed over the screaming of the crew moments before the flying vessel was thrown to shore.

He felt himself rolling over and over again after being thrown free of the railing, his teeth clacked together painfully and his old injuries cried out with every jarring collision. As he came to rest, knocking over a kiosk of sea shell merchandise, all that he could do was stare upward at the flying form that cast its shadow on him.

"Imperious Rex!" The nearly nude man roared as he dripped water on the stunned speedster. His eyes were blue fire and his teeth were clenched in a grimace of rage.

"Freakin' Namor!" Speed Demon groaned, but didn't have time to dwell on it before the shimmering silver form rode a surfboard up behind him.

"I've got to stop smoking that cheap Wal-Mart crack." he gasped.

**

* * *

**

The Bronx

"Are you sure about this?" Angelica asked as she and Wanda walked away from the rough looking bar behind them.

"Vision and Vance will be able to convince Pietro to exit the confines of that watering hole much better than you or I could." Wanda said, sounding a little drained.

"Why do you think that is?" Angel asked.

"It is a guy thing, I suppose." Wanda shrugged "I'm just glad that he ran to a Transian neighborhood to sulk instead of running to Transia."

_"Ayal zun cul fil plla funn sa!" _An older man crowed at them as they walked by.

_"Tul slak tu bier."_ Wanda said politely as she continued walking.

"What did he say?" Angel asked as he passed out of earshot.

"He recognized me and… had a compliment to deliver." Wanda informed her.

"Why that old…" Angel began.

"In Transia, old men are not… exactly what you would call shy. They mean no harm, however." Wanda said with something approaching a smile.

They walked in uncomfortable silence.

"Is that why you are so frustrated with Cap?" Angel asked tenderly.

Wanda looked at her with blazing eyes.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry." The younger girl professed as she regarded the expression.

Wanda's face settled, but her eyes still showed a hurt and rage that the rest of her refused to express.

"I always have a feeling that… in another world… the two of us were meant to be together." Wanda admitted "I feel angry at this world sometimes that it will not allow it. I could never be angry at Steve, though."

"I understand what you mean." Angel said "It took me a long time to realize that you can't hate someone for being right, and sometimes that can drive you crazier than…"

"I'm not crazy." Wanda interrupted her.

"I didn't…" Angel tried to insist as they came to a sudden stop.

"Is that what you think? I'm crazy? That Wanda Maximoff is… how do you Americans say it… off her rocker? That I'm following the family tradition? Is that what you think, Ms Jones? IS IT?" She screamed, her tone dripping with anger and contempt, drawing the attention of the eastern European women haggling at a nearby fruit stand.

"I'm sorry, Wanda… I didn't mean that…" Firestar tried to apologize.

"Keep your apologies! It isn't as if you are alone! THEY ALL THINK THAT OF ME! Poor, unstable Wanda and her poor, unstable powers. They all fear me because they can't control me, and they do not understand how much will it takes to control myself!"

"Chill out, will ya!." A voice came from above, causing both of their eyes to snap up. "You'll wake the neighbors!"

Spider-man looked down on them with those expressionless white lenses that seemed both comical and unsettling at the same time. He was hanging upside down from a streetlight, slowly lowering himself on his web line.

"Hi Spidey!" Firestar chirped, trying to hold back her joy at seeing him but not succeeding very well because of the surprise.

"Spider-man." Wanda said in a neutral tone.

"Sorry to interrupt, ladies, but with all the screaming I thought somebody was being mugged."

"Excuse me… I think that I need to take a walk." Wanda said.

"Aw, don't be that way Scarlet!" Spidey whined "We could go window shopping, or hit the salon… It'll be a gas!"

"No… I think it would be best." Wanda insisted.

"All alone in this neighborhood?" Spidey persisted.

"I can take care of myself." Wanda said without looking back as she walked away.

"What's up with her?" Spider-man asked Firestar.

"Don't worry. It just a tough time for her." Angel said.

"Are you sure it isn't my breath? Do I have something caught in my teeth?" Spidey asked, pointing to where his mouth would be if it wasn't covered by his mask.

His spider sense didn't warn him about what happened next.

Firestar kissed his lips right through his mask.

The fast moving quips of Spider-man had always masked the insecurity of Peter Parker, and when that happened, he felt his entire body stiffen with shock and surprise. He didn't even know that he had let go of his web line until he was already on the cement.

"OH!" Angelica Jones gasped, both realizing what she had done and shocked at the consequences.

"What the…?" Spider-man groaned from the cement.

"I'm sorry… I'm so sorry…" Angel said as she dusted him off "I just was so excited to see you again. I didn't mean for that to happen."

"Did you get the number of that truck that hit me?" Spider-man said as he shook his head, just as stunned by the kiss as he was by the collision with the pavement.

Angelica looked around and saw that people were staring.

"Er… we should take this somewhere else." Firestar said, beginning to glow.

"Wait!" Spidey said as she flew off in a blaze of heat. He was still groggy but felt his body fire a web line and reflexively swing after her.

A mere moment after Firestar settled on a nearby rooftop she smiled as she heard Spider-man thump down right behind her. She turned with that same smile and wondered if he had the same one under his mask. If he was, the rest of his body language wasn't showing it. She had waited a long time for this, as whenever she had the chance to see him ever since he left the New Warriors… Vance was always there. She knew that Vance had never approved of their friendship, or the growing relationship between the Scarlet Spider and her, but once the Scarlet Spider disappeared and she discovered that he had become the new Spider-man she had always kept an eye on him, paying attention to his exploits and looking forward to seeing him again. She had been having troubles with Vance ever since the split with the Avengers, and knew that meeting him like this couldn't just be a coincidence, but had to be fate.

For his part, Peter Parker was more than confused by what was going on. Ben had never told him anything at all about his time with the New Warriors, much less his relationship with Firestar, so he was not even taking it into consideration when trying to account for her odd behavior. In truth, he had forgotten that Ben was ever a New Warrior. All that he knew was that she was acting strangely and he felt like he was on candid camera. He was a happily married man, but didn't know how to break that fact to her without either endangering his identity or inadvertently enraging a mutant capable of vaporizing him with her powers. All that he did know was that the two of them had a lot to talk about.

**

* * *

**

Westchester

A couple of years ago a teenager named Chris Powell fell into a carnival funhouse while being chased by a group of criminals using it as a hideout. Even at the time he thought that it was something out of a Scooby Doo cartoon. He found an amulet that switched his body with a nearly indestructible and regenerative robot form, and so began a long and complicated struggle of self discovery that ensued in the birth of a unknown and obscure hero. That was the way he liked it, and it didn't help when his Avengers ID went off during chemistry class. As the Quinjet settled onto the X-men's front yard, burning a circle in the lawn, Chris felt that it was his duty to let his misgivings be known.

"I'm having second thoughts about this…" Chris said from within his robotic form.

"Relax. Just another day in the life of an Avenger." Black Knight said.

"But… I'm not really an Avenger. Y'know… I never thought that Quasar would miss a meeting."

"Are you kidding? That guy has died almost as many times as I have!" Wonder Man laughed.

"He's freaking dead?" Darkhawk shouted.

"I don't think so, but you never know…" Wonder Man said in a sinister tone with one eyebrow raised like a cartoon villain.

"I'm sure you'll do fine, Chris. We aren't expecting any trouble anyway." Iron Man assured him.

"Obviously you don't know the X-men." Warbird said through gritted teeth.

"Button it, Carol." Wasp ordered.

Jan didn't know whether she or Iron Man was considered the leader of this little adventure in Quasar's absence, but on a team with so many leaders as this one she didn't think that it mattered. She just looked to Captain Marvel for support, and Monica Rambeau nodded back at her. There was nothing more reassuring than facing the unknown with good friends tested in the heat of battle.

"We shouldn't have to fight them." Monica said "If they see the light of reason, they will hand over Cap, but if they don't… they will rue the day that they messed with the Avengers."

Darkhawk saw Black Knight put aside his sword and shield, having already resolved to face the X-men unarmed. He had said that facing them on friendly terms would be nearly impossible if he faced them with weapons in hand. The youngest Avenger didn't know what kind of bravery it took for a man with no powers to put aside his only weapons while facing some of the most powerful mutants on the planet, but the Medieval Avenger insisted that he still had a trick or two up his sleeve if worse came to worse. He had fought the X-men before, alongside the Wasp and Captain Marvel, and knew better than Chris what and who they were facing.

If Chris Powell had a throat, he would have swallowed the lump he felt in it. He had never really been an Avenger despite being accepted as a member. He had helped them in the Infinity War and Infinity Crusade… he just wished that they hadn't called him again until the Infinity Reunion. He looked out the Quinjet's window and saw the array of X-men gathering there. It looked like an unruly mob. There had to be over a dozen of them. He didn't need cosmic awareness to know that this was going to be ugly.

Outside the Quinjet, Cain Marko cracked his knuckles. It had been ages since he cracked an Avenger's skull, and the Juggernaut in him desperately wanted this group to cause some trouble. Colossus stood on one side of him and Wolverine on the other. He was still getting used to having somebody next to him that had his back after so many years of relying on no one, but this was going to be buckets and buckets of fun. He didn't want to say it out loud in front of such sensitive company, but he was looking forward to stomping a mud hole in their candy asses.

"What is the meaning of this?" Storm and Cyclops shouted in uncanny unison as the Avengers disembarked from the Quinjet with a swagger that they seemed to carry everywhere they went.

"This is a school, and school is in session… you can't just barge in…" Cyclops said, wrenching the forum away from Ororo while trying to maintain a civil tone.

"We have business here." The Wasp said with a voice of authority that surprised Cyclops into silence.

While she was leader of the Avengers Cyclops had been playing house with Madeline Pryor in Alaska. He would always think of her as the vain socialite that changed her costume so often that it made Jean green with envy and drove her to give up heroism in the attempt to be a fashion model. He tried to keep himself from sneering as he composed his reply to the woman.

"You would be referring to Captain America." Cyclops stated.

"Good guess Sherlock! You deserve a Scooby snack for that one!" Wonder Man wisecracked.

"We've come for him." Iron Man acknowledged.

"He isn't here." Storm responded brusquely.

"What the hell was that? A Jedi mind trick?" Carol Danvers snarled, pushing Iron Man aside. "Cut the crap! We KNOW he's here!"

Janet Van Dyne sighed under her breath when she heard Carol's tone and saw the reaction that it caused. The lawn was literally swarming with a horde of X-men. She saw not only Cyclops and Storm; but also Iceman, Havok, Psylocke, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, Angel, Wolverine, Colossus, and another huge drink of water that looked familiar. The most dangerous ones she saw was the hellfire club's old White Queen and the younger Phoenix (or whatever she called herself this week). Even the Beast, an Avenger long and true, was not a friendly face in this crowd. A display of power of that magnitude would be enough for anyone to want to maintain a civil tone, but Carol Danvers never had been shy about stepping on toes. Looking at the way that the assembled mutants bristled, however, made Jan wish that just once the slag could have kept her damn mouth shut.

Seeing the way that she stared at Rogue, though, she understood why history made that impossible.

"Enough of this! This is my school and I'll be…" Emma Frost exclaimed as she reached out to freeze the Avenger in place with her mind, but she would not have time to realize the mistake that she made until it was too late.

Even as all the Avengers lost that ability to move, for the amount of time it took for her to say the words between enough and be, there were still electrical charges flying though the ambulatory systems of Tony Stark's armor, for it had been programmed to execute a very specific action in the event of a drastic change in the electrical signals its sensors received from Tony's mind. For Tony Stark's most precious asset was not the multi million dollar suit of armor he wore, but rather the mind that built it. No one should ever be surprised at the lengths that he would go to protect that. The targeting computer locked in on the two primary targets most likely to have initiated the control of its owner's mind and almost instantly fired one full-power repulsor blast at each of them. Rachel had an invisible shield of telekinesis around her before the shot was ever fired, so she was simply knocked silly and thrown nearly a hundred feet back when the ground beneath her exploded into a shower of dirt clods, but Emma took the full brunt of the concussive force that could have liquefied her internal organs if it were a direct hit. She was quite literally knocked into the middle of next week, as that was when she would finally regain consciousness.

"What in the name of God…" Cyclops yelled in shock.

"What… happened…" Tony slurred as he regained control of both his mind and his mouth.

"You… you tried to…" Jan accused, but didn't have a chance to finish.

"You rat fink bastards!" Logan screamed, running full bore at the Avengers and unsheathed his claws with a metallic hiss.

"Logan! No!" The Beast shouted too late.

"Oh Crap!" Darkhawk groaned as he saw Wolverine leap about ten feet straight up, coming right down at them claws first. He didn't even hesitate before ejecting the metal claw in his right fist and leaping up to meet him. The other Avengers were still recovering, and were not all blessed with a nearly invulnerable body capable of self regeneration. He flew to meet the Canadian mutant just in time to tackle his mid torso instead of meeting the tip of his claws; knocking the wind out of him and propelling both of them into the wood line.

"Darkhawk!" Jan yelled as the two forms rolled away into the undergrowth.

Then everything erupted into chaos.

**

* * *

**

Long Island

"Run!" Gus screamed to the other bystanders as he threw his little daughter over his shoulder and ran like the devil was after him.

All Gus had wanted was to take his daughter fishing, but that was far from his mind now that simple survival was on it. It was as if there was a clash of the gods happening on the coast of Long Island. A silver skinned alien on a surfboard was locked in combat with a glowing man in multicolored clothes, solid light objects and energy bolts flying everywhere. The infamous Hulk was pounding away on a man who seemed to be giving back as good as he was getting, as insane as that sounded. The Sub Mariner seemed to be smashing every structure standing on the beach in an effort to catch an impossibly fast runner while reality itself seemed to be bending around a man and a woman in outrageous clothes hovering a hundred feet off the ground. He had to get his daughter away from this freak show.

He thought that he had gotten away when the plate glass window of a storefront exploded outward and a pair of thrashing women rolled over and over on the pavement. The store collapsed behind them, as they had obviously done enough damage inside to bring it down. It looked like something out of a bizarre catfight fantasy as a grimacing blond in a metal bra pounded her golden broadsword into the transparent disk that the one in the purple toga held in front of her to protect herself.

"You cannot hope to survive the rage of an Inhuman princess, hag!" The brunette in the toga snarled.

"I am a handmaiden of death herself, and death comes for you today!" The blond screamed back as she continued her assault.

Gus tucked his daughter under his arm and ran the other direction, but the way was blocked by fallen rubble. He rushed down an alleyway, trying to say soothing things to his panicking little girl as he ran, but only groaned at the sight that confronted him. A woman in a yellow cat suit leapt from dumpster to dumpster trying to avoid the projectiles that were flying though the air. A man dressed in tattered clothes fit for a funeral was firing what seemed to be a miniature crossbow in rapid succession, having little or no luck scoring a hit on the cat woman but getting more than close enough to Gus. He threw his own body between the battle and his daughter as he dived behind a dumpster and prayed that they would not come his way.

Why did these people always do this? Didn't they care about him or his terrified little girl? It always made Gus feel like an ant trying to dodge between the toes of stomping giants.

**

* * *

**

Brooklyn

"What the heck are we doing here anyway? Exorcizing some more old ghosts?" Sam grumbled as they settled down on the rooftop of a familiar brownstone.

Cap didn't answer him.

"I'll tell you what… I'll just wait here for you on the roof. You do what you have to do… but I'm warning you that it you aren't back up here but sundown I'm calling in the Cavalry."

Cap just nodded and headed down the stairs.

Sam Wilson thought that he had seen Steve Rogers in every kind of mood that he could be in, but he had never seen him like this. Distracted wasn't quite the word for it. It was as if he was immersed in whatever was troubling him. Tension, guilt, confusion, and relief alternated over his features at any given moment and he wouldn't say a damn word about it. Whatever was on his mind he was chewing on it pretty hard inside his brain. Sam pulled up a piece of wall near the door to the stairs and leaned on it hard, evoking the ghost of the days he spent working the streets as a pimp named Snap. Whatever happened downstairs, he hoped that Steve would come back through that door with his head in the right place. Too much was depending on him just now for him to spend so much time worrying about things like this.

Steve breathed hard as he walked down the steps, certainly not from the exercise and not even any lingering breathing trouble from the smoke inhalation. Rather, it was from the uncontrolled beating of his heart, his sweating palms, and the goose bumps that were raising on his skin. He was employing all the methods he had ever learned to stave off nervousness, but they did not seem to be working in this situation. There were some things in life that were tougher than battle, harder than war, and he was about to do one of them.

He was not looking forward to it.

**

* * *

**

The Bronx

"So he was just a clone… of you?" Firestar asked sadly. She had been quiet for a long time after he had given her the news.

"Yes… I'm sorry that I never told you guys… it was just… I don't know. I never knew that any of you were close to him."

"We… I… wasn't." Firestar said softly "But we could have been."

"I know what you mean." Spider-man said sadly.

"He was such a great guy." Angel lamented.

"He was like a brother to me." Spider-man responded softly.

"Why wasn't there ever a funeral?" She asked.

"I'm not sure. There wasn't a body, first of all, after the Green Goblin was done with him. Not many people knew him, and those that did I didn't want hanging around asking too many questions. Anything that revealed his secret identity was bound to reveal my own." Spider-man said this out loud for the very first time, having considered it again and again in the long months since Ben Reilly gave his life for him.

"Is keeping your dual identity that important to you?" Angel asked with a hint of irritation.

"Keeping the ones I love safe is." Spider-man said resolutely. "The Goblin knows my identity, and that maniac has struck out at my friends and family over and over in order to get to me. He killed the first woman I ever loved… caused the loss of my child… and murdered my brother."

He turned his back on Firestar, and Angelica Jones was struck on how different it was talking to Spider-man right now. It was almost as if she was talking to an entirely different person, and that wisecracking devil-may-care adventurer that she had grown up admiring was just a fabrication… as much a mask as the one that he wore over his face.

"I know what you mean." Angel finally said, remembering what had happened when her own secret identity had been discovered for the first time, and the consequences for her father.

"As bad as the Goblin is, he is not the only enemy that I have made… or the worst. What if they all knew what he knew? How could the ones that I care about ever be safe? What if somebody like Carnage found out? These are the things that keep me awake at night."

"I guess it is a little bit different when you are a part of a team… like the Warriors, Avengers… or even the X-men. We take care of each other. Look out for one another." Firestar thought out loud.

"The only one there is to take care of me is me." Spider-man insisted.

"It doesn't have to be that way." She said.

"That's just the way it is." He said.

Just then, Angelica's purse started beeping.

"Damn. My pager." She cursed, digging around in her purse.

"That's why I don't carry those things." Spider-man said lightly, sounding a little like his old self again.

"Back to the mansion, ASAP." She sighed "I'm sure whatever it ends up being about will be positively earth shaking, like Wolverine having a hangnail or somebody else coming back from the dead."

"You X-men sure get away with a lot." Spider-man said "Knowing my luck, if I came back from the dead I'd get nailed for insurance fraud."

Firestar laughed at that despite herself as she rose into the air.

"Take care of yourself." Spidey waved to her with a smile under his mask.

"I'd like to see you again sometime." Firestar admitted as she began to soar away.

Peter didn't know quite what she was inferring by the word "see" but he agreed with her.

"That would be great." He heard himself say "I'm sure we'll be amazing friends."

She just smiled an flew away, leaving Peter Parker with his thoughts. He understood immediately what Ben had seen in her. It wasn't just her looks that reminded him of a young lady that he had grown to marry.

* * *

**Long Island**

"Not enough, monster." Hyperion snarled as he took another horrendous blow from the green skinned behemoth. "Not NEARLY enough!"

The double axe handle that he brought down on the Hulk's head could be heard as far away as Connecticut, yet the monster seemed barely fazed by the blow, simply grabbing his opponent's throat in a two handed grip that could cause diamonds to crackle like rice crispies.

"Hulk will smash puny man for hurting Hulk!" The monster bellowed in his face with breath smelling curiously of baked beans "Puny man is stronger than puny humans, but HULK IS STRONGEST ONE THERE IS!"

Hyperion tried to remind himself again that he had no need to breath as the Hulk crushed his windpipe, and that his uniquely invulnerable physiology would instantaneously repair any damage that was done. All that aside, he still wished that he would be able to articulate a comeback to the dim witted freak before his larynx burst. His arms were not long enough to reach the creature's throat, so it was all that he could do to try and break its grip by thrusting both arms between the creatures and bowing them outward. They struggled in the midst of a death grip that caused Hyperion to experience an emotion as close to panic as he had felt in the long time. With so few people in this world who could approach his might, he had never worried overmuch about learning how to fight. Such things usually took care of themselves. However, it was obvious to him now that this beast was stronger than him, and he would not be able to defeat him in a physical contest. He had to think of something else before the Hulk tried to do something to him that his body would not heal.

The devastated seaboard of Long Island bore mute witness to the colossal struggle between the Syndicate and the Defenders. As he struggled with the childlike savage with limitless strength, Hyperion realized that this was not like the battles with the Avengers. The Avengers relied on teamwork, strategy, and organization to win the day. That was what the Syndicate had been training long and hard to counteract. There was no organization to this at all. This was a simple knock down drag out street fight, and the Syndicate was losing.

Nearly a mile above this struggle, a quite different battle was taking place. Doctor Strange hovered in the lotus position through the power of his cloak while Jennifer Kale zoomed around him using the broomstick that she had conjured along with her costume.

"You cannot win, Jennifer." Doctor Stephen Strange said confidently as his Crimson Bands of Cyttorak encircled Jennifer Kale, the erstwhile Moonglow. "I am the Sorcerer Supreme, and not matter how much you have learned from the book of fate that does not change the fact that the Vishanti is with me in this matter."

"I've been underestimated before." Jennifer said just as calmly, conjuring the acidic mists of the Waboom to weaken the unbreakable bands that surrounded her. "Including by you."

"Yes, but you had your coven with you on that occasion. Where are your sisters now?" Strange said as he prepared another spell.

"I don't need them! For the better part of ten years I guarded the Nexus of Realities all alone, with nothing but the shell of Ted Salis for companionship! Do you think I spent all that time stomp dancing in the bayou? No! I studied every day in preparation for a conflict like this! You will not take my friends while I draw breath!"

The Crimson Bands cracked and shattered, torn apart by the Flames of the Falantine that roared from Jennifer's hands.

"You have grown powerful." Doctor Strange admitted "But you have grown no wiser."

"Your time has ended, old man." Jennifer hissed "When I am done with you the first thing I will do will be to erase your very memory from the mind of the world. With the book of fate I will cast you into an oblivion so total that it shall be like you never existed."

Jennifer's Bolts of Bedevilment clashed into a thousand colors against the Barrier of the Berak that Doctor Strange evoked with a wave of his hand.

"This isn't you at all, Jennifer. These… criminals should mean nothing to you. If you are ever to attain the wisdom to be a true sorceress instead of a dabbler you must free yourself of the worldly greed and avarice that drives these people."

"Greed? Avarice? What would you know about it? What would you know about the want and need that gnaws in the hearts of men and women every day? The empty stomachs, the unmet needs? You are a wealthy, retired physician sitting every day in the lap of luxury! What do you know about what drives my friends?"

Her indignation and distraction was the opening that he needed, and as he easily dodged more Bolts of Bedevilment he opened the eyelids of the amulet of Agamotto, washing her in the light of pure truth.

To Jennifer Kale it was as if every lie that she had ever told, every lie she had told herself, was spoken aloud in a single instant. She was so stunned that she did not notice that she was wrapped in the Mists of Morpheus an instant later. As she drifted off to sleep, one last lie rang so loud in her ears that her final thought was that it was a wonder that she had not gone deaf.

Doctor Strange wrapped her in the Bonds of Bahumut, and looked down at the beautiful young woman sadly. He thought of her last words. He thought of a vain and callous doctor that would refuse his lifesaving touch to those who did not have the resources to pay his extravagant prices. He thought of the fool, blinded by greed and all the worthless ways that the worldly measured success. He thought of the man he used to be before the Ancient One revealed a hidden world to him that he had never known existed.

"I understand more than you could ever know." He answered her question, but she did not hear him.

Far below the mystical clash a much more conventional battle was being waged, as the Golden Archer was stalking through the darkness of the alley. He did not know where the woman who called herself Hellcat was hiding, but he did know that he had finally scored a hit on her. He also knew that his arrowheads were tipped with a drug that caused a loss of equilibrium and eventually consciousness. He was nearly out of arrows, but he only needed one more. Her claws had raked his flesh, and the battle had been long, but he knew that he would be victorious. All that he had to do was follow the trail of blood. He was no fool, knowing that the Syndicate was getting the worse of this fight, but he also knew that if he could kill just one of them and escape he would finally be more than just another costumed crook. He would be a legend in the business.

"Here kitty kitty kitty." Golden Archer said through an evil grimace.

Behind the dumpster Patsy Walker was fighting the grogginess that threatened to overtake her. One thing was for certain, and that was that she was not going to be doing any back flips anytime soon. He could hear in the voice of this cruel man what he intended, and she would be damned again if she would let that happen. Her claws were out, and she fully intended to use them once he got into range.

_Let's see how well you shoot with your eyes gouged out. _She thought as she cradled her wounded side.

She wasn't a doctor, but the bolt seemed to have struck uncomfortably close to her liver for her taste. Pulling it out had done even more damage, but it had needed to be done in order to minimize the damage from the poison that he had laced the arrow with. Suddenly a wave of nausea overtook her and her throat filled with vomit. As she swallowed the bile she clamped her eyes shut, and it was only when she opened them that she realized her mistake.

The grinning villain was standing right over her, with his crossbow pointed at her head.

"I just knew that I was going to get some pussy today." Golden archer said with an evil leer as he cocked back the bolt "I just don't know if I should have my fun before or after… what do you think?"

"Go to hell you bastard." Hellcat sputtered weakly, saliva trickling from the corner of her mouth as her costume began to soak through with her cold sweat.

"You first, kitty." Golden Archer laughed as he took aim.

Hellcat burst forward with claws extended, fully intending to take his eyes, but through some kind of serendipity her lack of coordination caused her to strike the weapons instead, trashing its trigger and nearly taking Golden Archer's trigger finger with it.

"Arrgggh! Bitch!" Golden Archer snarled in pain as he threw the crossbow away. "That's ok. That's just fine! All that means is that I get to do you up close and personal!"

Golden archer pulled a long hunting knife and pulled Hellcat's hair to expose her throat. Pressing the blade against her carotid artery.

"Go ahead and scratch me again, kitty, and I'm going to declaw you at the first knuckle. Go ahead. I want you to. I want to find out if you're a screamer."

Patsy was too dazed and disoriented to do anything but weakly swipe at thin air, seeing him farther away than he actually was.

"Damian…" She muttered, looking at something that only she could see.

Golden Archer took off her mask, admiring the wholesome face of a teen model and celebrity of some notoriety. His ex-wife had never missed a day of Patsy Walker's daytime talk show while it was still on.

"Beautiful kitty." Golden Archer said with something approaching tenderness "You are going to give me everything I want, and when I am done you are going to beg me to kill you."

"Let her go." A resolute voice came from behind him.

There was something about that voice that gave the Golden Archer pause, something that caused his skin to break out in spontaneous hives and made him feel an odd fluttering in his bladder.

"Turn around and look at me." The voice said impatiently.

There was a heat behind him that was like the grill of a 76 Nova after driving through the entire Mojave desert in August. There was nothing in this world that Golden Archer wanted to do less than turn around. He felt his body do it despite himself.

"Strictly speaking, I'm supposed to wait until you are already dead." The red headed man in the trench coat said.

Golden Archer felt his bottom lip tremble like an infant.

"But this time I decided… what the hell?" The Son of Satan laughed from behind his razor sharp fangs.

**

* * *

**

Westchester

Simon Williams knew that he was in trouble.

The air was split by the screeching sound of tearing metal as the Juggernaut tore through the Quinjet like tissue paper. Simon knew that, even with his great strength, that was not something that he could have accomplished. He could have punched a hole in it large enough to get through, maybe even with enough momentum to carry him through the other side. In the Juggernaut's case, though, since the Quinjet was in his way it has simply ceased to exist… torn apart by an invisible and irresistible force. Simon knew that he didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of defeating this guy. He wasn't Thor or Hercules, drawing on a godly source of infinite might. But he was an Avenger, and he did have to try. He was the only one there that the Juggernaut couldn't kill.

Crackling with Ionic energy, Simon flew forward with a savage right cross enhanced by his flight speed. The blow could have leveled a skyscraper or caved in the bulkhead of a battleship, but the Juggernaut took it on the chin with a noncommittal grunt. Wonder Man didn't even see the backhand that threw him to the ground, marveling at how someone so huge could move that fast, and only registered the slap in his mind when the big boot landed on his chest, imbedding him into the ground.

"Hey sexy boy… nice punch." Juggernaut growled down at him.

"Got more… where that came from…" Wonder man forced through gritted teeth.

"You know… I really liked that barbarian movie that you did with Swartzenburger… You ever think of going any Gladiator pictures, sissy boy?"

"Not really… my genre…" Simon coughed.

"I'd ask you fer your autograph, Hollywood, but silly me…no pen." Juggernaut shrugged as he increased the pressure on Simon's chest.

The Avengers had utilized a strategy that was working, minimizing the advantages in numbers that the X-men possessed by scattering to the four corners of the lawn. By forcing the X-men to spread out with them, they had prevented them from encircling or ganging up on them. It was capitulating to a divide and conquer strategy, but it was their only chance in a desperate situation. Simon had jumped the Juggernaut immediately, though, and their brawl had gone no farther than the wreckage of the Quinjet. Simon still didn't know how this fight happened, but now that they were neck deep in it he was going to do his best to win.

From his prone position Simon could see Iron-man battling Colossus, sparks flying everywhere as iron alloy clashed with omnium steel. A half mile in the air Warbird grappled with Rogue, and - knowing their history - Simon would rather be here under the Juggernaut's boot than between those two ladies. There was still no sign of Darkhawk or Wolverine, although a puff of leaves exploded out of the wood line every so often. Black Knight was getting the crap choked out of him by a very angry looking Nightcrawler, and maybe it wasn't such a good idea to leave his sword in the Quinjet. Jan had disappeared, but Cyclops and Beast seemed to be out of the fight while caring for the two telepaths that Iron Man had lit up with his repulsor blasts. Neither one of the women had moved.

"It is really too bad that your punk ass was all that showed up." Juggernaut laughed as Simon groaned. "I would have like to cream Thor, Hercules… hell, I might have settled for that Gilgamish jerk. You, on the other hand… you're a joke."

"I'll tell you a joke, laughing boy." Simon grunted, futilely pushing at the pile-driver like foot that was crushing the life out of him.

"No.. let me tell you one!" Juggernaut said "Just to pass the time before my foot crushes your damn spine."

"Save it, chuckles." Simon coughed. "I don't have enough… breath to laugh anyway."

"Why do they call him Wonder-man?" Juggernaut asked with an evil grin.

Simon just glared up at him.

"C'mon… why do they call him Wonder Man?"

Simon struggled harder, knowing what was coming.

"'Cause after that Swartzenburger turd bombed, everybody wondered where he went! Har har har!" Cain Marko guffawed.

Simon's red eyes glowed like two bursts of light.

"Hey! What are you…" Juggernaut yelped in surprise as Simon slapped a combined martial arts move on him.

Simon vaguely remembered Captain America teaching him the move just as vaguely as he remembered feeling like he would never need to use it. He hooked his arm behind the knee; whipping his own leg between Cain's legs, over the quadriceps muscle, and hooked his ankles together. Done by someone with Wonder Man's strength, the move was capable of bringing even the juggernaut to his knees. Once Marko's chin was within range Wonder Man started pounding it with his free hand, giving every blow all the power he could manage from his prone position. The Juggernaut's foot slipped, allowing Wonder-man to topple the mountain of a man to the ground behind him. In an instant he was on his feet, gasping for breath that he knew he didn't need and ready to continue the fight.

"Well well well…" Juggernaut said as he got to his feet. "I can count on one hand the men who have knocked me on my ass. Maybe you'll make this a little interesting after all."

Simon Williams charged forward, all vestiges of his Hollywood veneer stripped away and the very core of what he was visible for all to see. For it took a very special kind of individual to be an Avenger. The Fantastic Four taught you to be a family, The Defenders taught you to protect the innocent, the X-men taught you to survive the hatred of men, but - even if you learned nothing else - the Avengers taught you how to fight.

* * *

Darkhawk made his way through the wood, straining his inhuman auditory organs to hear the slightest hint of his opponent. Wolverine had discovered to his chagrin how well Darkhawk could see in the dark, so now seemed to be using cover and concealment to baffle the young man in the cyborg body. He was using hit and run tactics, bursting out of the brush with flashing claws before disappearing again. He had scored two or three hits, and Chris was left with wounds dribbling green fluid to remind him of those mistakes. He had given as well as he had gotten, tearing Logan with his own claw twice and blasting him with his darkforce beam, but he was certain that the mutant had regenerated those injuries by now. He now focused on jumping from treetop to tree top with his glider wings. The Birds-eye view gave him the advantage over Wolverine, he hoped, making him the predator instead of the prey.

"I'll give you this, punk… you're tough." He heard a gruff voice from behind him, and whirled around on his branch to face Wolverine. "Dumb as a brick, but tough."

"I'll take that as a compliment coming from you." Darkhawk's inhuman voice hissed.

"You're not going to get the best of this, punk." Wolverine said with narrowed eyes "A word to the wise… you've got power, but no discipline."

"So I've been told."

"It's going to cost you." Wolverine said, slashing at the branch that they shared.

"Whoa!" Chris yelled as he plunged toward the forest floor.

He deployed his wings too late and only spun out of control before crashing to the ground. He saw a rapidly growing Wolverine plunging down at him, claws first, and his life flashed before his eyes. He had no idea how, but he rolled out of the way just in time for Wolverine to stick his claws up to the knuckle in the fallen log he had landed on. In an instant he was on Logan's back, using his 300 pound form to crush the smaller man into the log while he employed a rear choke hold with his superhuman strength. He cinched in the hold even though Wolverine favored him with a very creative stream of profanity. He heard him withdraw his claws into his hands to free them from the log, and just as quickly pop them again. Chris, in terror, pressed down harder in order to keep Wolverine's own body between him and the claws.

"Undisciplined punk…" Wolverine snarled "No discipline…"

"Shut up and go to sleep, ho!" Chris grunted as he cinched in his choke hold. He was glad that his uncle the cop took the time to show him the maneuver, because right about now it might be the only thing that could save his life.

* * *

"Is she all right?" Cyclops asked in a panic.

"She has a concussion for sure. Maybe a couple of broken bones. Rachel isn't as bad, but I have to get Emma back to the lab now!" Beast said, lifting her in his arms and jumping across the lawn.

Seeing Emma go down had made Cyclops totally ineffective as a field commander, and it was Storm that was leading the charge against the Avengers as he hovered over the wounded. He could have commanded someone else to do it, maybe Iceman or Angel, but they were locked in futile combat against a much more powerful Captain Marvel. Storm's lightning bolts and Havok's plasma bolts had passed right through her, and he wasn't certain that his eye blasts would do anything different. She had melted Iceman, electrocuted Angel, stunned Kitty with a dazzling burst of light, and was flying rings around Storm. Was there any kind of energy that the woman couldn't turn into? What was worse, Cyclops didn't know what caused this fight in the first place and was equally clueless as to what would bring it to an end.

"I'm sorry, Rachel." Cyclops told his unconscious daughter "I never should have put you in harm's way, or said the things that I did…"

"Very touching." Janet Van Dyne said a second before she put a bio electric string behind Cyclops' ear.

Scott Summers was unconscious before he even hit the ground.

Just as soon as all hell broke loose Jan had reduced herself to insect size and promptly disappeared for all intents and purposes. It was not so much being invisible as it was playing on her tendency to be overlooked and ignored. She had intended to whisper into Hank's ear and try to diffuse this situation. He had bounded off with the ice queen, though, and ruined that opportunity. Even though she had no intention of engaging in this mindless brawl, she still could not miss an opportunity to cut the arrogant Cyclops down to size. She buzzed off toward the school, effortlessly dodging energy bolts, ice bolts, and other less explainable projectiles as she focused on her objective. She had to find Cap. Everything depended on finding him before it was too late, and kicking the snot out of the X-men wasn't going to get that accomplished any faster. She wished, not for the first nor the last time, that Cap had never left them.

* * *

Black Knight felt the three fingered hands crushing his windpipe and marveled at how powerful Nightcrawler's grip was. The Mutant was crouching on his chest, where he had landed after appearing in a cloud of foul smoke. He felt a swell of anger at the mutant for ambushing him in a manner completely lacking in chivalry, especially given Nightcrawler's reputation. But seeing the anger that was burning in the mutant's yellow eyes he could understand why he had not thrown down a gauntlet between them or slapped him in the face with a glove before proceeding to choke the life out of him.

"Monster!" Kurt Wagner snarled, totally enraged at what he had seen "You ambushed us! You hurt Rachel… You could have killed her! How could you do this?"

Nightcrawler's tail slapped Dane in the face, ringing his helmet like a gong and - for some stupid reason - reminding him of last year's New Years Eve party.

"You shouldn't have left your sword in the jet." Nightcrawler said, pointing to the wreckage of the Quinjet with his tail "If you had it, maybe you would have a chance."

A glowing blade burst through Nightcrawler's back, sending a jolt of harmful energy throughout his entire central nervous system too quickly for him to even teleport away. He stiffened up as if he had stuck his fingers in a light socket and made a brief squawk before her fell aside. He was totally unconscious, having fallen victim to Dane Whitman's photonic blade. It had been created a few years ago by cribbing some of Hank Pym's bio electric technology. Black Knight had kept it tucked in a compartment on his belt because it was much easier to conceal, and that had almost gotten him choked to death. He was on his feet in and instant, swinging the humming blade at any X-man that got to close. Angel flew straight at him with his fists ready, looking a little crispy around the edges after what Monica had done to him. Dane didn't hesitate to run him through, knowing that the Photonic blade was not lethal.

"Gaaacckk!" Warren Worthington squawked as Dane sidestepped his dive-bombing attack and watched him roll away.

People would be surprised at how much of combat is simple intuition; simply a matter of trusting your feelings and listening to your gut instincts. It was just that trust in himself that caused Dane Whitman to step aside at the exact instant that he did, not surprised at all to see a thrusting pink katana where his head should have been. His own blade whipped to meet it and in the next instant he locked blades with a beautiful Asian woman with purple hair. She met his gaze and time seemed to stand still for a moment as chaos continued around them. Neither one of them moved, but both of them had muscles tense and ready for the slightest hint of movement from the other.

"Hello, Betsy." Dane said pleasantly.

"Whitman." She replied with a barely perceptible nod, the aristocratic lilt of her British accent at odds with her appearance.

"What took you so long?" He asked.

"I was hunting your lady love, but I couldn't find neither her nor my butterfly net." Psylocke said with a hint of menace "She is going to make a very handsome addition to my collection."

They unlocked blades in a flurry of motion and both took a step back, slowly circling in opposite directions like some bizarre geosynchronous orbit as they looked for an opening. Dane knew that she was dangerous, and that she probably knew that he knew that she was dangerous. What was worse, she knew that he knew that she knew that he knew she was dangerous. He could only hope that she did not know how dangerous he was. She could probably anticipate his moves if he thought about them too much, so it was essential that he empty his mind of thought, and only be moved by his instincts.

"I won't let you hurt her." Black Knight said with conviction.

"Worry about yourself." Psylocke said, flashing a glance to the fallen Warren Worthington before becoming a blur of motion.

Sparks flew with every clash of the humming blades, as Psylocke's pink psionic blade rasped again and again with the yellow of Black Knight's photonic one. She was surprised at the fight that he put up, as she had studied both eastern and western swordsmanship… while he was simply a student of the European style of that continent's dark age. She considered herself his superior in every way save perhaps physical strength, so it was doubly humbling when he caught her blade in a low guard and busted her lip with his elbow. She staggered back and melodramatically wiped at her lip with her forearm, looking at the blood there and smiling.

"A point to you, Whitman." She said with an aggressive hiss.

"There is no point to any of this." Black Knight said "I don't want to fight you… any of you. We're on the same side."

"There is far, far too much blood on your hands for you to be the voice of reason." Psylocke observed, circling him like a hungry jaguar.

"It isn't about reason so much as honor. This is just a misunderstanding. There is no honor in this combat." Dane continued, holding his blade in a high guard as she slowly advanced.

"Honor differs from culture to culture, and more often than not simply serves to keep those in power who have no concept of it." Psylocke said.

"Honor is everything." Black Knight fired back.

"Your devotion is sad." Psylocke said "You are simply parroting the words of your master."

A huge slab of ice crashed between them, and they both leapt back. It looked like Bobby Drake was back in the fight, although the streaking light above spoke volumes regarding how far Captain Marvel was from being out of the fight.

"I don't work for Merlin anymore." Dane yelled at her as he leapt onto the ice slab, sliding across it with grace.

"It doesn't surprise me." Betsy Braddock laughed as she leapt on the ice with perfect balance "Neither my brother nor I could measure up to his expectations, so I don't know why you ever thought you could."

"It wasn't about expectations, or measuring." Black Knight insisted as her blade clashed with his again.

She skated across the ice as if she were wearing blades on her feet, whirling and hair whipping beautifully as they both danced an uncertain dance of death on unsure footing. He kept his feet firmly planted, lashing out with his upper body strength, as she utilized her entire body like a deadly ballerina.

"You have already lost." Psylocke observed as she pressed her attack.

"I will not yield." Dane said through gritted teeth, although he could feel the fatigue in his arms and the trembling of his knees from keeping his purchase on the ice.

"Then you will bleed." Psylocke said impassively, staring past their crossed swords "For my blade is no longer just a thing of the mind."

Dane swallowed the lump in his throat and fought on.

* * *

"I must break you." Colossus said in a matter-of-fact tone of voice as he pounded away at Iron Man's armor with steel fists.

"Thanks for the tip." Tony said as he opened up with his repulsor blasts.

"You will pay for what you have done!" Colossus said with more anger, pushing forward against the repulsors like a kid fighting to swim upstream.

_Geez this kid is tough_ Iron Man marveled inwardly as Colossus shrugged off his most powerful blows. _Why do I always have to fight metal covered Russians? Isn't the cold war over?_

Peter Rasputin slapped Iron Man in a somewhat ironic bear hug and began to put the big squeeze on the armored Avenger, lifting him right off the ground like a little girl. Tony tried to fight back, but his rabbit punches and sissy kicks clanged uselessly against the unyielding form of the steel skinned mutant. He thrust both arms between them and tried to break the hold, but it was no use. Rasputin was easily twice as strong as his armor's strength enhancing servos.

"Urrrrrggggg!" Tony gasped as he felt his chest compress inside his armor. If he didn't do something he knew that he was going to end up looking like a can of tomato paste that got ran over by a steamroller.

Tony fired his boot jets and suddenly the two of them were a hundred feet over the mansion grounds.

"I am not afraid of heights." Colossus said evenly.

"Do… you… like.. oxygen?" Tony coughed, hearing his breastplate begin to collase under the pressure.

"What?" Colossus asked as they climbed ever higher.

"I… promise you… that… if you… do not… let go… you will have… used up your… oxygen privileges." Tony said with difficulty, intense eyes glaring at Colossus from his eye slits. He felt like his ribs were about to break.

"Interesting threat from a man who cannot breathe himself." Colossus grunted, cinching in the hold again.

I can… breathe fine… in space… how about you?" Tony gasped.

It was only then that Peter Rasputin looked down, and realized that he could clearly see the entire eastern seaboard.

He let out a roaring curse in Russian.

"Such… language." Iron Man almost laughed.

"Put me down!" Peter screamed.

"Didn't you… ever want to… be a cosmonaut… when you were… a kid?" Iron Man teased his again, continuing to fire his thrusters at full blast. They were nearing escape velocity. "Here's… you chance… to be Sputnik!"

"PUT ME DOWN!" Peter demanded.

"Let… GO!" Tony fired back.

"You won't let me fall!" Peter screamed, realizing that he could see Europe.

"No!" Iron Man fired back.

Peter let go, and started falling as fast as a 1500 pound lump of steel could.

Tony couldn't slow down fast enough to reverse course, so he tried to engage his tractor beam to catch Colossus. It was only when sparks started showering out of his chest that he realized that the metal mutant had crushed his tractor beam. Right before the strongman had let go, Tony had felt something burst wetly in his ribcage and tasted blood in his mouth. Seven different alarms were screaming in his helmet, and he could actually hear transistors popping. If he didn't do an immediate diagnostic and repair he would be joining Peter in the big plunge.

"Liiiiaaaaaarrrrr!" Colossus screamed as he fell.

Tony felt terrible, but there was nothing that he could do for him except hope that he landed on something soft. He had to fix his armor and get back to the fight before he lost consciousness.

**

* * *

**

Taco Bell, 28th and 6th

"You want to mexi-size that?" Josh asked through his braces. He hated working in this damn place.

"No, I think that is enough trans fat to choke a donkey thank you very much." The irritated woman snapped back.

_Hey, you're the one who ordered it you anorexic little bitch._ Josh bit back the comment so hard he almost ripped out his tongue ring. He just wanted this damn day to be over so that he could go home, fluff up his faux hawk, paint on some black finger nail polish, put on some women's underwear, and hit the Goth clubs.

"That'll be $15.87." Josh said instead.

"Here you go." She said.

KAAAABOOOOOOM!

The screams were like a symphony as the roof caved in on everybody, raining plaster dust on all the chalupa-eating saps in the plastic restaurant.

"Oh my god!" The woman screamed.

Imbedded into the broken tiles of the floor was a man who seemed to be made out of metal as shiny as the chrome on a pimp's rims. He looked like he was struggling to get up, and everybody started running for the exits as he popped up.

"IT'S A MUTIE!" An old lady screamed and threw her stuft soft taco supreme at him.

"RUN!" Someone else said, and the entire restaurant did except for Josh and the lady who still had not gotten her order… and probably never would.

"This is so… awesome!" Josh laughed.

"I'll tear you both together!" Colossus slurred, swinging at nothing "I'll take you both apart!"

He started muttering in Russian, and then he fell flat flat on his face.

"Peter?" The woman asked nobody, looking at the fallen mutant.

"You know this chunk?" Josh asked with a laugh.

"I… used to." She said quietly, then realized that she heard sirens.

Josh saw the woman run up to the metal man and touch him as second before they both disappeared.

"Oh crap!" Josh said, realizing that he was the only one around to explain the million odd dollars of damage to his work place. They could take this job and shove it.

**

* * *

**

Westchester

Rogue took a punch to the face for what seemed to be the hundredth time, sending her bouncing across the lawn like a tennis ball. Her fight with the former Miss Marvel had started so suddenly and savagely that for a moment she had not known who she was fighting, and the savagery had not let up since. It was like Warbird had come here looking for this fight, and wouldn't be satisfied until she got her pound of flesh. She was even wearing a full body suit instead of her typical thigh high boots and opera gloves look, as if she knew that she needed to protect herself against skin to skin contact. Rogue got up and wiped a drip of blood off of her lip. She had beaten this bitch before and she was going to do it again.

"Ah know that ahm not your favorite person!" Rogue screamed as she hurled herself at Warbird like a missile "But ah think that you've got some real problems, missy!"

"I haven't gotten a single problem that wouldn't be solved by your death, skank!" Warbird snarled as she leveled Rogue with a karate kick.

"This fight ain't no use! We've got the same powers!" Rogue complained as she recovered from the kick.

"And do remember why that is, bitch!" Warbird screamed, punching Rogue again as she flew by.

"Because ah took your powers." Rogue said, punching back.

"Powers? You took my memories! YOU TOOK MY LIFE!" Carol Danvers almost wailed, seeming not to even notice the punch as she kicked Rogue in the stomach.

"How many times can ah apologize for that?" Rogue screamed. "You got your memories back! The Professor helped you!"

"I got memories, but I'll be damned if they're mine!" Warbird yelled back as she drove her elbow into Rogue's cheekbone. "I have no connection to them at all! It is like I watched them on television! I don't even know if I loved my own mother! Don't you know what it is like to not be able to feel?"

Rogue was staggered for a moment, fluttering like a butterfly in a stiff wind.

"I know…" She began, intending to spill her guts to the woman, but the tender moment of admission was ruined by Carol Danver's fist.

The were like a pair of whirling dervishes in the sky; battering each other with a flurry of punches and kicks, blocks and blows. Carol Danvers was a finely trained combatant, but was blinded by her unexpectedly strong hatred for Rogue. The life-sucking Mutant was not as highly trained or motivated, but she was a quick learner and still had vestiges of Carol's memories within her mind. They were not as strong as they used to be, thanks to Professor Xavier's intervention, but still enough to know a few of her moves as well as counter them. It was true that they were evenly matched opponents, but - as was always the case - a battle of evenly matched opponents was won by whoever wanted it more.

Warbird's fists glowed with energy and she unleashed a wave of radiation that left Rogue's silhouette burned on the lawn below.

As blast of solar energy hit Rogue, all that she could think of was pain. Her body was highly resistant to injury, but she was far from invulnerable. She could smell the stink of her singed hair and her fighting clothes burning as she plunged to the earth. The crash was jarring, but she tried to get up anyway. Rogue was a fighter, and was not going to fall so easily. Her blurry, blinded gaze regarded a familiar shape thumping down next to her, and swung at it futilely.

"Since when… you can… do that?" She asked, almost conversationally as her vision began to clear up. She was still seeing transparent purple blotches and red swirls everywhere.

"I always had the power, but until I became Binary I never knew how to use it." Carol explained as she grabbed a handful of Rogue's singed hair. "I just wanted to beat you fairly, using the powers that we share. The powers you stole from me. Then I realized something, just now, why we were fighting."

"What was that?" Rogue said with another missed swing as Carol pulled her to her feet by her hair.

"Life isn't fair." Carol said bitterly, and began hammering Rogue with fists glowing like an arc light.

Every punch burst with blinding light, the force of a bomb blast, and all that Rogue could do was stay on her feet, stagger back. She did her best to defend herself, but it was no use. Carol came on like Larry Homes pounding an aging Muhammad Ali, not giving an inch because she knew what her opponent was capable of. She had dreamed of this moment of vengeance for too long to pass up the opportunity. It would take a hard person to beat this half conscious wreck of a woman, as she would probably pass out on her own once the adrenaline wore off. Carol pressed on anyway, raining radioactive blows in rapid succession.

It was a hard world.

* * *

Jan couldn't help of thinking about Kyle as she flew through the mansion that housed Xavier's school. The architecture reminded her of his place on Long Island. She had already been chased by a little purple dragon and had to hide from a dozen strange looking children that the place was lousy with. Luckily enough, most of them seemed preoccupied with watching the combat raging outside to pay much attention to women who were insect sized. It was still hard to navigate in this place. How did they ever find anything in here?

She took a lucky turn and entered the lab, seeing the Beast feverishly working to stabilize Emma Frost. She fluttered up to him and landed on his shoulder, flipping the switch on her voice amplifier in order to let herself be heard.

"Is there anything that I can do to help?" She asked.

The Beast looked at her like she was dandruff.

"I'm sorry about what happened." She said sincerely.

"You should not be the one apologizing." Hank McCoy said with an angry huff "How could Tony Pearl Harbor the X-men like that? Didn't he know what would happen?"

"You didn't want to fight us, did you?" Jan asked.

Hank didn't say a word, just continued working.

"You have a nurse on staff here. She could have taken care of this while you returned to the fight, but you didn't want to fight us."

"No." Hank admitted "I'm sure that if the others were here, they would feel the exact some way."

"Where are they?" Jan pleaded "Where is Cap? That's all we wanted to know."

"He spent an evening here, but then returned to his hunt for the people who hit SHIELD." Hank said, brushing the hair out of Emma's face.

"We can't believe that." Jan said "We tracked him here using a device that we gave him to contact us with, and it says that he is still here."

Hank looked confused.

"But who could…" then realization spread over his face. "Oh no…"

* * *

"Undisciplined punk… no discipline… punk…" The battered, bloody Wolverine muttered as he lay pinned under a fallen tree Darkhawk had knocked over on him.

"Shut up, old man… I completely flattened your ass and you know it." Chris garbled, spurting green ichor from every wound.

The fight had been long and brutal, but at long last it looked like it was over. The clearing was soaked with blood and green fluids from a thousand wounds as they had savaged each other with claw and fist. Chris had actually been hiding behind the tree that he knocked over, but when he saw the arrogant strut of Wolverine as he followed his scent - no longer even making the slightest effort to hide - he had been struck by a rage. With an inarticulate roar of inhuman fury he had pushed the tree with all of his superhuman might, and been rewarded when the roots ripped right out of the ground. Wolverine probably could have dodged it under normal conditions, but - despite his healing factor - he was still in bad shape from this savage battle. When the dust cleared, Logan squirmed under the tree, gasping for breath from his flattened lungs.

"Heal that, asswipe." Chris muttered, turning away from the trapped mutant and leaving him to his fate.

He touched the amulet and felt his body become Chris Powell again. He had been too afraid to do that at anytime during the fight for fear that Wolverine would only need that split second to kill him. He only needed that split second before he could once again switch places, allowing a fully healed Darkhawk body to take his place. It was a good thing, too… because that body had just about had it. He took to the air, determined to rejoin the battle and leaving a struggling Wolverine in a world of pain.

Just on the other side of the wood line, Havok had enough. Every time he had tried to fry one of these Avengers with a plasma bolt somebody seemed to be in the way. He was afraid to try to blast Captain Marvel again because his last blast had gone right through her and nearly hit Storm. This battle was a total mess of confusion and he wasn't even sure that he wanted to blast anyone anyway. He had yelled at Kitty to get the children to safety, and that had been his lone contribution to the fight. Now he stood next to his unconscious brother and niece, brimming with rage. The Avengers had to pay for this. He began to glow with bright radiance and concentric circles of pulsing power. He saw Darkhawk gliding out of the wood line and realized what that meant for Logan. His raised his hands and prepared to focus his power into a killing blast.

But that blast would never strike its target.

Alex saw the golden globe form around his fists, and suddenly it was as if all the energy of his blast was being drained out of him. All that happened was that the globe glowed a little brighter.

"What the hell?" Havok yelled, suddenly realizing that almost everybody was in similar straights.

Warbird was pulled away from Rogue with golden chains that appeared from nowhere. Juggernaut was pinned under an enormous golden anvil while Wonder Man stared with a puzzled expression at the huge yellow boxing gloves that were encasing his fists. Others were totally encircled with globes of light while others were tied to chairs that appeared out of thin air. Regardless of the method that was used, everybody was in some way restrained within an instant. The fight ground to a sudden halt.

"WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?" A voice as loud as God's boomed over the mansion as as Quasar streaked down out of the sky. Sweat was pouring down his forehead from the strain of retraining so many powerful people. He carried a huge yellow megaphone that his quantum bands had made.

Everybody started talking at once.

"SHUT UP!" He boomed again, knowing that they were going to make him lose his concentration if he listened to their mealy mouthed excuses. "WHO'S IN CHARGE!" He demanded of the X-men.

Everybody pointed to Storm.

Quasar flew almost instantly to the side of the woman that he had encased in a transparent globe. He realized that she looked very agitated inside of it, and that the weather was suddenly taking a turn for the worse. He instantly turned the globe into a floating disc for her to stand on, and landed next to her. She looked both surprised and relived.

"I'm Quasar." He said without the bullhorn "Leader of the Avengers, and I take as my personal responsibility anything that happened here. You have my most sincere apologies and my wish that we can talk this over… resolve it peacefully."

Storm was struck by this young man's sincerity, totally bereft of the confrontational swagger of the others that had led to this senseless battle.

"I'M GOING TO LET YOU ALL GO NOW!" Quasar shouted through the bull horn "THE FIRST PERSON WHO CAUSES ANY TROUBLE GETS A ONE WAY TICKET TO MARS!"

Everybody's restraints disappeared in an instant. Some looked very frustrated that the battle was over, like Warbird and the Juggernaut. Rogue and Wonder Man both looked very relieved, while the "grown ups" like Captain Marvel and Storm just looked embarrassed.

"Now tell me what happened here." Quasar asked Storm gently.

**

* * *

**

The Ruins of Long Island

Hyperion stood alone.

All of his comrades had fallen to the Defenders, and he was encircled. Doctor Spectrum had been no match for the Surfer. Power Princess had fallen to Valkyrie. Moonglow had been defeated by Strange. Black Eagle was inexplicably unconscious. All of them were imprisoned inside of some glowing sphere that Doctor Strange had conjured. Golden Archer had disappeared, and Hellcat had returned with bloody claws and a troubled expression. Hyperion had written him off as dead. At least it appeared Speed Demon had managed to escape. That left him in a circle of pissed off Defenders. He had - at the very least - seemed to tire out the Hulk somewhat. The beast's chest heaved as it circled him, glaring balefully.

"Bring it on." Hyperion said, motioning to them all and very mindful of the one that was missing. Just because he could not see him did not mean that he wasn't there. "I'll take on all of you."

"RAAARRGH!" The Hulk roared as he charged in, but a second later he clamped both hands over his eyes. Hyperion had finally gotten a lucky shot with his atomic vision, and the monster was blind.

Silver Surfer raised his glowing hand, mouth open to begin spouting philosophy, but his mouth filled with Hyperion's fist as the superhuman used his super speed to close the gap. He tore Norrin Radd from his surf board and threw him with all of his might. By his calculations the alien would land somewhere in the vicinity of New Jersey. He grabbed the shiny surf board before it could fly after his master and did his best to break it over the Hulk's head. A growling Namor came down on him with a vicious right hook, but after the blows he had taken from the Hulk it seemed like the playful punch of a child. Hyperion swatted him with the surfboard and watched him sail away like a home run. He threw down the surfboard with disgust, and was somewhat pleased to just watch it twitch on the ground as if it was as stunned as the still airborne Sub Mariner. Valkyrie came at him, snarling and swinging her golden blade in a display of ferocity that he found immensely appealing. He was so fast that he caught her sword between his palms six inches from his head.

"Do you really want this fight, beautiful?" Hyperion asked calmly as he stared into the wild blue eyes of the Nordic beauty.

"I've defeated better than you." She said with contempt.

He tore her sword out of her grip and back-handed her to the ground so fast that she didn't even see him move, and the next thing she knew he rammed the sword into the Hulk's gut. The big green monster roared in pain so loudly that the could probably hear it in Hoboken. The monster would heal in time, but for now he fell to the ground in pain.

"Bruce!" Valkyrie gasped, looking on with wide eyes.

The Handmaiden of Death was so stunned by what had happened that she was taken completely unaware as Hyperion grabbed her hair and began dragging her across the sand like a caveman with his mate. Doctor Strange and Hellcat were all that remained to oppose him, and in his mind that meant he had won.

"I didn't want this fight!" Hyperion hollered at Doctor Strange. "All that I wanted was to mourn my friend!"

"What of all the others that are mourning because of what you have done? Have you thought of them?" Doctor Strange asked calmly as the battered Hellcat hid behind him.

"Not for a minute." Hyperion lied.

"I wouldn't expect you to." A familiar, infuriating voice said from behind him.

Hyperion whirled on him with a grimace of anger, greeted by the sight of Nighthawk clutching an unconscious Speed Demon.

"He sure could run, but I can fly." Nighthawk observed, throwing Speed Demon into the sphere with the others.

"YOU!" Hyperion shouted at the top of his powerful lungs.

"Me." Nighthawk said, facing him without fear even as Hyperion dropped Valkyrie and lunged for him.

Crimson Bands of Cyttorak encircled Hyperion, pulling him away from Nighthawk.

"I knew that you would be the most dangerous." Doctor Strange said impassively. "Much too dangerous to stay in his world."

"Wha.. What!" Hyperion almost yelped as the crimson bands began pulling him toward a dimensional vortex that Doctor Strange had conjured.

"Do not worry, Hyperion… there are other worlds than this." Doctor Strange assured him.

"No!" Hyperion shrieked as he struggled against the bands, even forming small cracks in the bonds that held him.

"Yes!" Valkyrie screamed from where she was kneeling in the sand, face burning with humiliation and rage.

"You… how could you do this to us? YOU WERE ONE OF US!" Hyperion yelled at Nighthawk from the mouth of the vortex.

"Why don't you ask Trish Starr?" The Dark Defender asked, with dark rage in his eyes.

"Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!" Hyperion cried as he swirled away into the vortex to whatever unholy dimension Doctor Strange had chosen for him.

"You were one of them?" Patsy Walker asked, clutching her serious wound.

"Yes." Nighthawk nodded.

"You never told me that. I knew about the Squadron Supreme, but…"

"It was a long time ago, Patsy." Kyle assured her.

"Did you two know?" Patsy asked.

Both Doc and Val nodded, remembering Kyle as they had first met him. A vain, thrill seeking young man with no direction in his life. A costumed criminal who had wearied of defeat and was looking for protection from his more powerful colleagues. It was something that they did not talk about, these few who had seen Kyle sacrifice himself against Nebulon. They had been so convinced of his change of heart that they had all sacrificed a portion of their souls in order to bring him back from the brink of death. He had come back a better man, and for most of them dwelling on his criminal past was something that weakened and minimized the bond that was born that day. Not one of them could imagine what would have become of the Defenders that day had Nighthawk not come into their lives, for they knew all to well what had happened once they lost him… and when they found him again.

Namor jumped out of the ocean and the Silver Surfer returned as well, both looking incrementally more humble then when they departed. Valkyrie pulled her sword out of the Hulk and comforted him as his enhanced healing process took care of the damage Hyperion had inflicted. Doctor Strange embraced Hellcat in a fatherly hug, muttering platitudes about her courage as he surreptitiously cast a necromantic enchantment to heal her wound. The remaining Syndicate members lay unconscious in their sphere, breathing the Mists of Morpheus that infused the globe. Just like that, the Defenders were victorious once again. Nighthawk stared at the vortex until it faded from existence. His body ached from his fights with Black Eagle and Speed Demon, but his soul was singing. At long last, after all these years, it was finally over.

**Next: A Brief Interlude**

**The pieces are all in place. The forces are moving. This story WILL be finished sooner or later! Tune in next week (or month) True believer!**


	21. A Brief Interlude

**Authors notes:puts on broken record: thank all of you for continuing to read this story even though I only update it as often as the comet Nyrathotep enters our solar system. I promise that next chapter will be longer and more action packed, but I thought that Cap deserved a happy little interlude from all the angst (least I could do after I KILLED him in Avengers: The Nail). Enjoy and let me know what you think! Nothing but love for you guys.**

**Interlude:**

It wasn't every day that Captain America walked down your hallway.

Cap smiled at the dumbfounded expressions of the people in the apartment building as he passed. He had forgotten that he was in full uniform, which was kind of silly considering that he had gotten here by leaping from rooftop to rooftop. That only convinced him of how distracted he had been by the entire situation. Despite the distraction, he found himself looking right at his objective. Bernie's front door, and all he had to do was knock. Maybe he should have called first, maybe he shouldn't have come in costume, but here he was now. Despite that fluttering feeling in his stomach, despite the nearly uncontrollable urge to chew his nails that was only dissuaded by the fact that he was wearing gloves, he was determined to follow though with this… and no one should ever underestimate the power of Captain America's determination.

He knocked one… twice… three times… but there was no answer.

"Maybe…" Cap thought out loud, but only closed his eyes and shook his head.

As he was walking away he heard a creak in the floorboards and the knob turning. The door barely opened a crack, and the chain was still engaged. He slowly turned around to see the furious, red rimmed eyes gazing out at him. He could see little else.

"You always knock the exact same way… shave and a hair cut for two bits." She said quietly, the slightest whiff of bitterness wafting out.

"Bernie…" Cap began.

"Oh, you remember my name!" She said with mock surprise.

"Why wouldn't I? What's wrong, Bernie?"

"What are you doing here?" She asked with a tremble in her voice.

"I… think this is better discussed in private." Cap said, noticing people viewing the proceedings up and down the hall.

"We've had this discussion before… nothing you do is private." Bernie pointed out.

"I thought that you would be happier to see me." Steve admitted with genuine puzzlement.

"I thought that you would actually keep your promise. What was it this time, Steve? War in the Kree Galaxy? Hydra got the cosmic cube? Red Skull kidnapped whoever your REAL girlfriend is? I really want to know."

"This was all your idea." Steve pointed out, trying not to yell. "Do you think that it was easy staying away?"

"There are a lot of things that you make look easy." Bernie almost whispered.

"Will you let me in, Bernie?" Cap asked with kindness.

"No." She said, shaking her head furiously "I can't keep doing this."

"I'm here to keep a promise I made to you." Cap said "If you don't want me here… I'll go."

They were both silent for a moment, avoiding each other's gaze.

"I don't know what I want." Bernie admitted.

"We can talk about it."

More silence.

Bernie slammed the door.

For a moment Steve thought that she was going to undo the door chain, but the door didn't open.

"Bernie?" Steve said.

There was a shuffle behind the door.

"Go away, Steve."

"Bernie!" Steve shouted, wanting to pound on the door.

Silence stabbed him like an ice pick.

Steven Rogers, wrapped in Captain America's uniform, burned with humiliation. He had the strength in his arms to make toothpicks out of the door. He had words in his heart to make all things well between them, but his mouth just wouldn't say them. He almost quivered with the frustration of it, feeling his mouth open and close again. Struck speechless and stung with rejection, he turned and walked away.

Falcon turned around when he heard the door open, turning away from a sky that he had been scanning for threats. Redwing soared down from where she had been circling to land on his arm as he regarded Captain America, looking more crushed than he had ever seen him.

"Steve?" Sam asked, but Cap only shook his head in dejection.

"I'm sorry, man. You and Bernie… I always thought…"

"No." Steve said.

"What?"

"No." Steve shook himself out, his shoulder's straightening and his chest pushing out. His hands formed into fists and he turned on his heel like a soldier executing rear march.

"Steve, man, wait…" Sam tried to stop him.

"Its not going to end like this." Steve almost vowed.

"There are some fights you can't win with your fists, man." Sam spit out, realizing that it was something that Steve had once said to him.

"I don't fight with my fists." Steve said, disappearing back down the stairs "I fight with my heart."

* * *

Bernie was supposed to be at work. 

The work that she and Matt had been working on together, a legal challenge to the government's mandate to the Avengers, had been an uphill battle. She had been spending as many as sixteen hours a day on it, and still was getting nowhere. She had been telling herself that she was only going to stay at home for ten more minutes for three hours now, and Steve's visit had knocked her on her heels. She was refusing to let herself cry, but she felt like there was a creature behind her eyes trying to push the tears out. She tried to pour herself a cup of coffee but it seemed to go everywhere except the damn cup. It seemed to her at that moment that love was worse than crack, because a physical addiction could do such things to your body… but love could cut your to your very soul.

As she wiped up the mess she ignored the pebbles pinking against her window. Again and again, the tiny rocks struck her window with pinpoint accuracy. There was only one spot of dirt on the window where they kept striking. Bullseye couldn't have done any better. She remembered all the times that Steve had done that in the days when he had not wanted to be seen. At first she thought it was just her memory playing tricks on her, but as she realized it was real she had been ignoring it by force of will. She shouldn't have done that, because by doing that she was underestimating the force of Steve Rogers' will.

She gasped as a star spangled disc shattered her window, bouncing around her apartment like pac man until coming to rest at her feet.

"You… you bastard!" She gasped, looking down at the shield.

"Will you talk to me now, Bernie?" A voice echoed up from the street, three stories below. In New York traffic noise that might as well have been 20 stories, which showed more than anything the strength of the voice that was hollering.

Bernie picked up the shield and chucked it out the window. Instead of making the clean whistling sound that it always made when Steve threw it it kind of made a wobbling metal noise as it plunged toward the street. It was only after she threw it that the potential for lawsuits began to swim in her head and the image of a little old lady being beaned by the falling shield exploded in her brain. But as she ran, in a panic, to the window it was truly no surprise to see that Steve had caught the shield.

"I might sue you now you!" Bernie screamed.

"Good! At least then I could see you in court!"

"I'll call the cops! I'll get a restraining order!" She screamed down to the street, but just as soon as the words left her mouth; when she saw Steve standing in a crowd of admiring onlookers and stopped traffic the absurdity of the words struck her.

"I just want you to listen to me, Bernie!"

"What could you possibly have to say that would change anything!"

Even from three stories up, she could visibly see Steve's chest puff out as he took the ultimate deep breath.

"Don't you do it." Sam Wilson muttered to himself as he looked down from the top of the brownstone, horror gripping him "Don't you damn do it!"

Captain America began to sing, words straight from his heart.

"How can I just let you walk away… just let you leave without a trace… when I stand here taking every breath with you… you're the only one who ever knew me at all…"

"Oh, God…" Bernie blushed, a hand covering her mouth.

"How can you just walk away from me… when all I can do is watch you leave? Cause we've shared the laughter and the pain… and even shared the tears… you're the only one who really knew me at all."

Sam put his hands over his face.

"So take a look at me now… there's just an empty space… and there's nothing here to remind me… just the memory of your face…"

With no effort, without missing a note, Steve leapt on top of a van, sprung to grab a streetlight, and catapulted himself onto a power line strung right in front of her window. To her horror, she realized that the people on the street were joining in the song.

"So take a look at me now… there's just an empty space… and you coming back is against all odds that's the chance I've got to take."

Bernie could feel the tears flow as she looked in his earnest, honest blue eyes and heard a voice untouched by any embarrassment at humbling himself like this.

"Come here." She finally moved her lips, but no words came out. As he leapt through her broken window, she knew that the words had not been needed.

She threw her arms around his shoulders and started to sob as she heard the crowd cheer from the street.

"You big fraud." She sobbed and choked "You don't even like Phil Collins… you listen to Coltraine… Nat King Cole… Big Band music…"

"I sang it for you." He said softly "I remembered every word."

It had been playing softly in the background the first time they made love.

"Thank God you didn't sing Bryan Adams…" She laughed through her sobs.

"In the summer of 69 I was frozen solid… it didn't seem to fit the mood." Cap smiled.

"You bastard… you star spangled bastard… why do you keep doing this to me?" She asked his chest as her head rested against it.

"I came back here to keep a promise."

"You already broke your promise." She said "Our first date was on Christmas. That was our anniversary."

"You asked me to… wait…" Steve said "I'm sorry that you misunderstood… I thought that it was still done the way it was in the old days."

"What?"

"I counted our anniversary from the first day I met you… February of the year before… the day I fell in love with you."

"February?"

"February 7th… today." Steve said, holding up the ring he had kept tucked in his costume. "So what do you say, Bernie… will you marry me?"

She couldn't answer him because she was too busy kissing his lips.

* * *

Sam Wilson smiled as he looked down from the lip of the roof, but couldn't help but shake his head. He could see from the crowd's reaction that this attempt had gone much better than the subtle approach. Every time he thought he had Cap figured out the old man found another way to surprise him. This display had really been over the top, though.

"How touching." A voice came from behind him, causing him to whirl around with his fists up as a flash of crimson intruded on his peripheral vision.

Sam almost punched Daredevil in the face, but the red clad vigilante dodged it without even changing his impassive facial expression.

"I think that we should give the kids a little alone time before I swoop in with the bad news." Matt Murdock thought aloud, not even acknowledging that Sam had swung on him.

"Daredevil! What are you doing here?" Sam demanded.

"Are you kidding? I could hear that a mile away." Matt replied with a smirk.

"What bad news you got?" Sam asked as he punched his own palm.

"All in due time… this is their moment." Murdock said softly "There will be plenty of time later… to give the devil his due."

**Next:**

**The Secret Revealed! The Crimson Cowl Exposed! The Mystery at an end!**

**Tune in next week, true believers!**


	22. The Crimson Cowl

**Author's Notes: Thank you all if you are still reading this story or even remember the last time that it was updated! I apologize for falling out of updates for so long but believe me when I say that I had my reasons. Regardless of excuses, I hope that you enjoy this chapter, which is only really half a chapter. When I finished the actual chapter it was 25 pages long! So I have spent a great deal of time cutting the rest either out of existence or finding a place for it in the next chapter (which was not even supposed to exist). So please read and review and let me know if I have continued this story on the right track. **

**Captain America: Sentinal of Liberty**

**Chapter 22: The Crimson Cowl (Part One)**

Happy Endings.

We are always more comfortable when our stories have happy endings, even if they are not truly endings. It is a normal part of the human condition, for we all know the truth; that there is only one final ending to life. That is why we should take a moment to consider the scene before us. Steve and Bernie kissing in the unseasonable February sunlight, having overcome all the tragedy around them for one moment of true happiness, is one such moment. Casting off the bonds of cruel fate and making the decision to face whatever might come together. That is a happy ending, is it not?

Ah. I see. Too many mysteries remain to leave the story now. Too many questions have remained unanswered. Who lies beneath the Crimson Cowl, and what are the reasons for his nefarious deeds? I promise you this: by the end of this story you will know the answer to this question. But perhaps this knowledge will come at the cost of that happy ending. So you, the readers, are presented with a choice. Will you open the door on the left, walking out of this story with the happy ending that we all crave, or will you follow the door on the right: the path of knowledge?

The decision is yours.

The rain pours down so harshly that it bounces almost to the knee of the proud figure that stands cloaked in the darkness. It pours – as it was said - on the just and the unjust alike, but few would doubt that this man is among the former. Even in the darkness of the torrential storm, Captain America stands strong and proud. Regardless of what he has lost, both over the course of a long life and merely in the last few days, he stands against the February tempest with the same resolve with which he has faced both evil and the less devious aspects of the world. His fists are clenched so tightly that they are the only part of his body that trembles; not with the shivering caused by the biting cold so much as by the rage contained only by a noble heart. He looks up the hill, as lighting illuminates a great edifice to the glory of capitalism. It is this building that houses the architect of all his woes.

Now he knows it all. He knows who the Crimson Cowl is, what horrors the man has committed, where he has acquired the resources to commit them, and how he has executed his plans. All these things he knows, but he wishes to God that he did not. There is only one thing that he does not know… the answer to the most important question of all. The answer to the question that could make the other pieces of knowledge bearable, if not the betrayal. The simple question of why he has done this. Why he has masterminded the most ruthless and powerful criminal group that the world has ever known. Why he has torn apart the country and the Avengers. Why he has destroyed and massacred the agents of SHIELD. Why he has manipulated and destroyed one of the greatest men that he has ever known… and murdered the woman he loves. Not that it matters. Not that anything that this man would say to him could matter. The man behind the Crimson Cowl is sheltered within this symbol of cooperate might, but that will not save him. No force on heaven or on earth will save him from the rage of Captain America.

His fists unclench, and a ring that one day could have been a wedding band falls to the submerged pavement with a hollow plop. It floats down a flurry of rain water, through a surge of grey muck, and into a storm drain where it disappears from our story forever. For the ring is a symbol of dream that Steve Rogers so desperately wishes to hold onto… and Captain America knows that he can not. He could not carry such a dream down the dark path that he is walking, or to the black destination at the end of that path. Perhaps that is for the best, for throughout his entire adult life there has been only room for one dream in his life: The American Dream. He has never given up on this dream and it has never given up on him. He would carry it into the very gates of hell itself, and so he will to this final confrontation.

Stepping over the storm drain, he walks forth into the darkness of the night.

_One day earlier…_

"We can't get him to say a word." Agent Phillips snarled. "We sweat him for three hours and he didn't give us jack. We gave him sodium pentethol and he gave us his grandma's recipe for banana bread. Now he isn't saying a thing. It is like his jaw is wired shut."

Jack Norris looked at the man on the other side of the two way mirror and shook his head. James Dore Jr. was not the one that he would have chosen to interrogate. Anybody who thumbed through his records could see that the man's experiences as a POW during the Persian Gulf War had more than prepared him for anything that this little group could throw at him. There was one fact, however, that they could not deny… he was the only one who had a chance of knowing the information that they were after. Hyperion might have known as well, but he was gone. Speed Demon was still in detox. That Magician chick was still in a coma. Doctor Spectrum was dumb as a cantaloupe. Golden Archer and Hyperion were missing. Diplomats from Attalan had snatched the Power Princess out of their custody under the bogus diplomatic immunity the State Department had so idiotically granted the Royal Family. If there were anybody that they could get any information out of, it would be James Dore Jr. There was only one problem…

Dore's Father, James Dore Sr., was the senior Senator from North Carolina.

"We're running out of time here." Norris said, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. "Junior's daddy is gathering a barbarian horde of lawyers and I wouldn't be surprised if the old bastard himself kicks down the gate and walks him out the door. That happens and our only chance of finding out who ordered the bombing of the Hellicarrier walks out the door forever."

"We can't let that happen." Agent Phillips said, shaking his head so hard it was as if his head would fall off.

"Goddamn Gyrich." Norris said under his breath. Henry Peter was so busy chasing the nation's greatest hero that he had delegated this mess to him. A four way circle jerk between the DHS, FBI, CIA, and SHIELD. "Bag him."

"What was that?" the CIA Spook asked from his dark corner.

"Bag him." Norris said to the shadowy figure.

"What?" Vernon Lewis Hatchaway exclaimed. Norris really respected the FBI representative, but also knew from previous experience that the man had a weak stomach for some of the tougher realities of life.

"Black Bag him." Norris said "Purge the arrest record. James Dore is about to disappear."

"Are you crazy?" Agent Phillips gasped.

"No. Not Crazy. Mad." Jack Norris said "Half of your agency is dead and this is the son of a bitch who set the bombs. That makes him a terrorist, no matter who his daddy is. I don't know about you, but I want a little bit of time to make his acquaintance before Senator Dore takes him back to Charlotte."

The Spook in the corner met Norris' eyes, nodded, and headed out of the room to make it happen.

"What about Senator Dore?" Agent Phillips asked.

"If the Senator doesn't like it, he should think twice the next time the USA Patriot act comes up for a vote." Norris said bitterly.

Agent Phillips made a disgusted sound and walked out after the Spook.

That left Norris and Hatch to stare at each other.

"So how about it?" Norris broke the silence.

After a moment Hatch shrugged.

"I hear that Cuba is lovely this time of year."

_Manhattan:_

Dr. Henry Pym shook off the chill of the February afternoon as he walked through his townhouse door. His last meeting with Rachel was still on his mind. She was finally beginning to open up to him and reach out. He was glad of that… very glad indeed. His time on the other side of those bars had taught him just how much somebody needed to feel like there was somebody on their side. He let out a sigh as he threw his overcoat on the chair, regarding the unsightly splash of mail in front of his mail slot. Had it really been that long since he had been home? He supposed that it had been. Between his time with the Avengers, tour on the lecture circuit, and lab time at the university, mail seemed to have been the very last thing on his mind. He felt tired just looking at it. He had no idea why he felt so tired all the time.

"Bill… bill… bill… check…" He inventoried his mail with a sad smile. It seemed to him lately that the number of his creditors was beginning to far outstrip his patents.

The last bill slipped through his fingers.

For a moment the world stood still, and he stared at his fingers. They seemed to be suspended in amber. Then, just as suddenly, his fingers began to tremble and he was looking at his ceiling. It was like there was an elephant sitting on his chest, crushing his spine. He had known this feeling before. Too many times before he had known this feeling. The numbness in his arms and the crushing weight on his chest left no doubt about what was happening. He felt his chin smash into the ground before he even knew that he had fallen. Like the hero he was, he fought; clawing and scratching his way across the floor toward the phone even as his breath became so difficult that he was unsure if he would be able to speak. Helpless and weak as a kitten, he batted at the phone and just barely knocked it from the cradle with his fingertips. It was too late, though, and even his brilliant mind was too far-gone to remember the three numbers he had been so desperate to push. He just stared at the buzzing thing in his hand as the darkness closed on him.

He never thought it would end like this.

_Xaviar's School for the Gifted:_

You could cut the tension with a knife.

"Now that the children are separated, how do we handle this?" Storm broke the tense silence with a tone that was equal parts clipped and elegant. Her voice reverberated off the chromed walls of the airplane hanger, giving it even more resonance than normal.

"We are just going to have to do the best we can." Quasar responded earnestly.

The bulk of the X-men had been sent to various classrooms to calm down their students, although in the Juggernaut's case he seemed to be doing more to rile them up. The Avengers were isolated in the library under the watchful eye of the Vision, who had been both reluctant to take part in the conflict and to take the role of watchdog. Beast and Storm looked to Quasar and a nervous looking Wasp and still found it hard to believe how easily their respective groups had tried to rip each others' throats out.

"I'm ashamed to admit that I don't even know what my team was doing here." Quasar finally said, looking to the Wasp "I know that this is not an excuse, but being protector of the Universe… it is a big responsibility."

"No… I'm sorry." Janet said "We should have waited for you. We should not have assumed command… but it was just so urgent."

"What could be so urgent?" The Beast asked "Forgive me for prying, but two Avengers and two X-men are in the ICU recovering from a misunderstanding that could have been avoided with the simple courtesy of a phone call."

"How is everyone?" Quasar changed the subject, confident that Janet could explain herself given enough time.

"Iron-man has internal bleeding, but his armor is the best life support system on the planet. Black Knight isn't as lucky. He lost a lot of blood and if it hadn't been for his armor Betsy would have eviscerated him. Rogue doesn't have anything broken, but that is the most that can be said for her. Emma is totally unresponsive and might be in a coma. The Summers'… or Summers and Grey as Rachel would have it, are suffering more from bruised pride than anything else and are already..."

"Enough." Storm cut him off "I must insist that you explain yourselves."

"That is reasonable." Quasar conceded.

"Captain America…" Jan began "We were just looking for Cap. He didn't answer the emergency message we sent his communicator, and we tracked the ring back here."

"We know that much." Beast said, holding up the recently discovered communicator "How Rachel came to have it in her gym bag is… ahem… anybody's guess."

"We overreacted." Jan said bluntly. "We discovered something that he needed to know, but when we found out where he was we felt… snubbed."

"What did you discover?" Ororo asked.

"The identity of the Crimson Cowl." Jan admitted.

"Jarvis?" The Beast asked with a wrinkled nose.

Jan simply glared at him, angered by the memory almost as much as she was by Hank's insistence on bringing it up.

"The guy behind the Sinister Syndicate, and the SHIELD Helicarrier." Quasar filled them in. "I certainly want to know who it is."

They all stood in tense silence. Jan tried to be strong, but could feel her eyes mist with tears.

"The worst person it could possibly be." She finally said.

"Ouch. My whole body hurts. Even my hair hurts. How do I look?" The southern drawl came from beside him, distracting Dane Whitman from his own pain.

He looked over to where Rogue lay beside him and gave it a moment of consideration.

"You want tact or honesty?" Dane asked.

"Hopefully both." Rogue would have laughed if it hadn't hurt so much to do so.

"You look like you got hit by a dump truck filled with nitroglycerine." Black Knight said, opting for honesty.

"Heh heh… ouch." Rogue groaned and then began coughing.

"Nice to see that you haven't forgotten your manners, Whitman." A frigid, sarcastic, yet familiar voice came from behind him.

Dane turned his head to face Quicksilver, who was standing at the foot of Emma Frost's sickbed. He looked as constipated as a portrait of the Duke of Wellington, and probably was as glad to see him as the good Duke must have been to see Napoleon.

"Hi Pietro." Dane said with the pleasantness that only vicodin could impose on him. "How's Crystal been?"

Pietro's face was next to his in an instant.

"Mention her name to me again and I will make whoever did this to you seem a verifiable saint." Pietro whispered with menace, and an instant later was back in his original position.

Dane simply stared at him, not responding to the thinly veiled threat at all. He didn't have time to ponder the situation any further or bemoan the fact that the hatchet between Pietro and himself seemed to have come unburied again. A moment after the words were exchanged the doors to the ICU opened and a verifiable tide of mutants poured in. Firestar, Justice, Polaris, Northstar, and Vision poured into the ward with concern on their faces. Having all been away when the intruder alert sounded, none of them were being forced to sit in the corner as the combatants were.

"Hi kids." Black Knight said to Firestar and Justice "Who're your new pals?"

"I'm Polaris and this is Northstar." Lorna Dane told him.

"You're Polaris… you're Northstar" Black Knight asked for clarification in his drugged haze, pointing to each in turn.

"Yes." They both said.

"Are you two some kind of team?" Dan asked.

"No… Why?" Northstar asked, not knowing what he was getting at.

"Isn't Polaris the North Star?" Dane asked.

Silence reigned.

Polaris and Northstar stared at each other.

The Vision began making some clicking noises that could have been laughter.

"Shut up." They finally said in perfect unison.

Outside the room, Scarlet Witch stood by herself. She could not bring herself to enter the room. Dane was so pale and looked so weak. She could almost smell the death wafting off of him and she could not bear it. She was not close to him. He always seemed to belong to the Avengers at times when she was just leaving, taking his own leave when she returned. She did not very often hear flattering things regarding him from the other women on the team. The comments had always ranged from courtly patronizing to outright coldness. Yet in the end he was an Avenger… something that she could no longer say about herself.

Her cape snapped behind her as she whirled around, storming away to be alone with her thoughts.

Under the Crimson Cowl, he smiled.

There were many weapons at his disposal, all of which he slipped into various pouches throughout his uniform. The dark red costume had many such hiding places, and the all-encompassing cloak made them even harder to see. Stepping up onto the anti gravity glider that was his main method of transport, he smiled at the elegance of the design. The Green Goblin would be greener than usual with envy to have such a sophisticated piece of equipment. It had sprung from the mind of a true genius in a world which bestowed that title much too easily. He slipped his feet into the stirrups and felt the buzz of the cybernetic link snap into place. It would respond to his thoughts even when he was separated from it.

"It will feel so good to finally see some action." The resonant voice said from beneath the cowl.

In a moment, the Crimson Cowl was airborne. He had no doubt as to the whereabouts of his enemy. After carefully observing him for so long he knew that the man would flee back to the arms of the Rosenthal woman after the tragedy that had befallen the SHIELD Helicarrier. Either that, or the man would seek solace with the Scarlet Witch despite the inconvenience and impropriety of it. The good Captain was nothing if not predictable, and he had been leaning on women for emotional succor ever since Peggy Carter in the forties. Despite all of his strength and his invincible persona, the man was still nothing but a little boy who missed his mother, his first love, and pathetically sought them in the faces of other women.

The Crimson Cowl knew his enemy, and knew just as well that this was the moment for his destruction.

"I am coming, Captain." The Cowl whispered as he soared over the city "Make your peace with your creator, for today you will meet him."

Steve Rogers and Bernie Rosenthal were locked in a passionate kiss, and - even though many minutes had passed - neither of them were in the least bit tempted to break it. When Bernie finally did, Steve just stood there dumbfounded without a clue as to what he should say.

"Who proposed to me?" She finally asked, pulling off his mask.

"What do you mean?"

"Steve… or Captain America?"

"You know that we are the same man."

She shook her head "You two… are more different than you will ever know." She said, wiping away one of her tears of joy "I can only marry one of you."

"Are you saying… you can't marry me if I keep being Captain America?"

"No." Bernie said as she shook her head "I love you both. I just need to know who to put on the wedding register."

All Steve could do was smile at that.

"It doesn't matter, I guess. No matter what I am going to end up being miss Captain America. Maybe I can even get my own costume."

"Just as long as you don't make one for the kid and the dog, that sounds like an excellent idea." A gritty, familiar voice came from the window.

Steve whirled to attack, and probably would have followed through on his plan of action if it were not the familiar visage of Daredevil he saw standing patiently in front of the window. He was still the only man who could consistently sneak up on him. The Falcon flew into view outside the window with a bewildered expression on his face.

"Man, I didn't even know that you were gone." He told Daredevil as he gave Cap an embarrassed look and pointed to the corner of his mouth "Er.. Steve… you have some lipstick… right here."

Steve wiped it away with the back of his glove.

"I am sorry to interrupt, Bernie." Matt said "But I am afraid that this is not about our deposition today."

"I… gathered that from your choice of suit." Bernie managed to say. She had heard all the rumors about him, but seeing him here like this was a totally different experience. She could not reconcile the blind lawyer she worked with everyday with this vigilante in red tights.

"I didn't mean to be an interloper, but there is not time for niceties, I am afraid." Daredevil continued, able to smell the barely concealed rage wafting off of Steve Rogers' body.

"What is it?" Steve asked with surprising self-control.

"I've been working with the Avengers. We've discovered evidence that could lead us to the Crimson Cowl."

"What? Why the hell didn't you say so?" Falcon butted in, angry that Daredevil had not told him.

"Why didn't you?" Steve reiterated the question.

Daredevil was silent for a moment, carefully considering what he needed to say.

"I don't think that you are going to like where the evidence points." He said, as directly as he knew how.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that… that… errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…" Daredevil trailed off as his entire body locked up, and then he fell to the ground as his body began spasming.

"Daredevil!" Falcon yelled, leaping to the aid of the hero of Hell's Kitchen. It was like he was having an epileptic seizure.

From Daredevil's point of view, it was like his ears were on fire. It was like that fire was a bolt of electricity racing through his entire nervous system. He had felt this once before caused by an ultrasonic weapon that SHIELD had developed to take him down in the event that he ever went rogue, but his mind was barely able to reconstruct that event through the haze of pain that surged through his entire body.

"What's going on!" Falcon yelled, not able to hear the hypersonic signal that was assaulting Daredevil's senses.

He was answered by the entire exterior wall exploding inward.

It was a credit to the reaction speed and agility of Captain America that he was able to leap from Daredevil's side to get his shield between Bernie and the explosion. However, a piece of flying rubble struck his head with a resounding thud even as it showered the others with drywall dust and pebbles of stone.

The entire room disappeared in a miasma of choking dust as the second, third, and fourth explosions rocked the building.

When the smoke finally cleared and the rubble fell away, The Falcon stood alone.

Cap had gotten to Bernie, but they were both down. Daredevil still lay where he fell, only now half buried in rubble. As stunned as Sam was, he still knew that he was their only hope now. Without hesitation he activated the motorized engines in his wings and barreled through what was left of the window. Redwing was screaming in his mind about a flying red thing, and Sam had no doubt about whom that was. To say that he wanted a piece of him did not do justice to his emotions. The figure in crimson robes was circling the building, but did not appear to have seen him. That was ok with Sam, because he had absolutely no compunctions about ambushing this dirtbag after all that he had done.

Falcon turned on his afterburners to slingshot himself around the building, turning his body into a living missile traveling 200 MPH. He held his breath, knowing from experience that he could not breathe when traveling at that speed, and locked onto the red menace with his guidance system. He hit the Cowl so hard and fast that that he didn't even have time to extend his fists, catching him instead with a massive shoulder tackle. The collision was so immense that he heard a moan of wonder drift up from the panicked crowd below, reacting, as they would from a particularly spectacular hit in a football game. He gritted his teeth at the pain as they crashed through the fourth floor window of the building across the street. One foot to the left and they would have been a smear on the unyielding brick wall, but instead they mashed a perfectly good sofa into an entertainment center that would never be used again. The Cowl's glider hovered in confusion, its cybernetic links severed and searching its wireless link for any guidance whatsoever.

"Aw… God… that hurt." Sam coughed, spitting flecks of broken glass off of his bloody lips. Maybe that wasn't the best idea he had all day.

The Cowl was groaning beneath him, so at least he was still alive.

"This isn't your day, jerk." Falcon snarled as he fought his way to his knees and straddled his fallen foe. "Cap would never hit a guy when he's down…"

Sam drove his fist into the cowled face of his opponent… hard.

"I'm not Cap."

Sam drew up his fish to punch again, but the cowl disappeared. He felt his weight thump into the ground and looked about with puzzlement.

"Where the hell…" he began, but the next moment he was flying across the room.

Sam crashed through a dining room table in the apartment, and it felt like his jaw was broken. Through blurry vision he saw a red figure standing tall, red sashes and a red cloak flapping in the wind from the broken window. He activated his wings, gritting his teeth as they helped him to rise from the wreckage of the table.

"Pathetic." The digitally garbled voice observed "Unable to stand, unwilling to fall."

"You're the one I can't stand." Sam yelled as he launched himself at his opponent.

His fists were mere inches from striking him when he again disappeared, and Sam crashed into the china cabinet that was behind him at more than 50 miles per hour.

"Ole." He heard the Cowl's disguised voice say sardonically, seemingly from the thin air into which he had disappeared. He groaned and once again rolled out of the shards of broken class and ceramic shards. He was really bleeding now.

He looked up just in time for the Cowl's boot to smash into his face.

"My turn." The Crimson Cowl said simply, his hands cracking with energy.

Every cell in Sam Wilson's body surged with agony.

1945

"Come this way." The full-bird Colonel said.

Steve Rogers nodded his head and followed him. Conspicuously absent was his familiar uniform, instead replaced with civilian clothes. He was unofficially on leave, and had been ever since the death of his partner. He had fished through the bay with the Navy for several days before giving up any hope of finding a trace of the young man. Whatever was once James Buchanan Barnes was now just food for sharks. Since then he had not put on the uniform once, and if he had been thinking about it he would have realized that it was the longest period he had gone without putting it on since the very first day he had. His mourning had only been interrupted by the orders he received that brought him to this place on the outskirts of nowhere. Camp Bliss was the only trace of civilization nearby and he had taken many detours through the painted desert to come to this place: a circle of corrugated metal shacks in the middle of a no man's land so complete that even the vultures had forsaken it.

This Colonel reminded Steve of a vulture, and it wasn't just his big bald head. It was the hunched way he walked, his beak like nose, and something about the look in his eyes. The look was an expression of patient, intense hunger. You were not so sure looking in the eyes of such a man what he hungered for, but it invoked a vague sense that - whatever it may be - you would not like it.

This entire complex was built half buried in the ground like the network of trenches that his father had spent the last days of his youth dwelling in. Yet, instead of the freezing cold that and constant dribling of rainwater there was simply the stifling smell of earth that had not known rain. It was infused with the warm memory of the day's burning heat that clung to the earth even as the mesa's temperature plumeted in the depths of the night. Steve followed this man through these trenches for no other reason than because he was so used to following such men, and because he had no idea of what else to do. He would not admit it to one person in this world, but he was exhausted; suffering from the same combat fatigue he had seen cripple other men and make them shells of their former, brave selves. He flinched at loud noises, and at sudden bright lights. His mind was preoccupied by dark thoughts, and he lived in constant fear that those around him would notice. It was why icy fingers gripped his heart right now, because if he had been sent to this remote base, so far from the war, did it finally mean that everyone around him had noticed? Had they realized that he belonged in the hospital but knew that no number of men in white coats they might send had a chance to take him there? Was it easier for them to send him to the desert, where he could do no damage to anyone save perhaps himself? He could think of no other reason that he could have been dispatched to this forlorn tract of New Mexico.

He couldn't have been more wrong.

They came to a strange opening in the dirt wall, like the machine gun nest of a German pillbox, and there was a man waiting for them.A middle aged, thin, and very nervous looking man. The man gave them no notice, not even acknowleging the approach of a uniformed Colonal. It was obvious to Steve that this man was a civilian. Something of his bearing was very familiar, but he could not place it.

"Is it time?" The man asked the Colonal without so much as a hello.

"This is Captain Rogers." The Colonal introduced him, garnering a curt nod from the thin man.

"Is it time?" He repeated.

The Colonal simply nodded.

The two of them put on what looked to be some pilot goggles with dark lenses, which made absolutely no sense as they were looking out of a bunker into what could have been the darkest night God had put on earth.

"Put them on." The Colonal said, regarding Steve in his puzzlement. "You will not want to miss this."

Steve placed them over his eyes, sliding the elastic band back until it was stopped by his ears. They were very bulky and uncomfortable to wear, but he could not even bring himself to be curious as to why he had to put them on. Ever since Bucky's death, and the news of Peggy Carter's disappearance, he had cared about very little. The Human Torch and Toro had disappeared mere days before rumors of the Soviets finding Hitler's burned remains. Namor had disappeared next into the darkness of the vast oceans, disgusted by the slaughter of humankind's war. Union Jack had fallen to an asassin's bullet in Berlin, and Spitfire would not leave his bedside. Then Whizzer and Miss America had finally decided to get married, and it remained to be seen if the newlyweds would return from their honeymoon steeled for war. Like the rest of the country, they seemed to be biding their time until it was over. That left no one but him. Just Captain America. Not even Bucky. If the Invaders and all they had stood for were to continue, it would be on his shoulders. Perhaps he could rebuild the team, with Maddy and Bob's help... if he could get in contact with the German Destroyer and the Blazing Skull. No one could match the power of the Torch and Namor, but perhaps with courage they could see it through. They could win this war. There would not have to be hundreds of thousands of American Soldiers dead on the beaches of Japan if only...

Bright light, like a thousands suns, burned his eyes.

"Oh... my... G..."

But he did not have time to utter the name before the sound hit him. Literally hitting him like the angry hand of a deity. His face was pulled back as though he were flying in an airplane with no windsheild even though he was standing still. He fell back a step, realizing somehow what he was seeing: and explosion more massive than any he had ever seen in war. A fire larger than the burning corpse of Dresden springing unbidden from the desert. The Invaders, the very war was forgotten. Burned from his memory by the violent birth of a new age, appearing before his eyes.

When the ringing in his ears subsided, and only the false dawn and a mushroom shaped cloud gave evidence that the explosion had ever happened. They still stood and stared.

The very first thing he heard was muttered words from thin man at his side...

"I am become death... the destroyer of worlds..." the man whispered, one hand clutched to his chest.

"What a weapon." The Colonel marveled, a smile splitting his wrinkled face beneath his mustache.

"Weapon..." Steve nearly stammered "WEAPON?"

The Colonel turned to him and pulled off the dark lenses that concealed a darker triumph in his eyes. Steve could see how the dust caked his face now that the lenses' shape left a clean area on his face.

"They all wanted you to be here." He said "They all wanted you to see this... Macarthur most of all."

Steve could only silently stare in confusion.

"We don't need you any more." The uniformed officer said, with a joy that could not be imagined, and he turned on his heel and walked away. He did not even give Steve Rogers so much as a backward glance before disappearing through the tunnel through which they had come.

As he looked at the skinny, perturbed man whom he had been left alone with, Steve Rogers finally realized who it was that the man reminded him of. As he slowly peeled off those black lenses, Steve could finally see it. It was in his eyes that it could be seen, not his bearing. It was a look that he had not seen since 1939... in the eyes of Professor Erskrine.

_Steve..._

Who could be that who was calling his name?

_Steve wake..._

Could it be...

_Wake up... Steve..._

Sara?

The Crimson Cowl mounted his war glider once again. He needed to use the wireless link in his belt to control it now, as the cybernetic controls had been shredded. It was a small inconvenience when compared to his physical condition. The accursed Falcon had nearly torn his feet off and he tasted blood in his mouth. He may have broken a rib and from the feel of his lower back he wasn't going to do any heavy lifting anytime soon. However, he now had the unconscious Falcon tied with a length of steel cable and was towing him behind the glider. As he flew toward the brownstone a bloody smile was under his mask. It would be so easy to kill him now, but he wanted the good Captain to see him do it.

"That… the best… you got?" He heard Falcon mumble as he stirred from his unconsciousness.

"You are one tough individual. I will give you that. You will soon learn that tough is not enough."

Electric fired poured down the steel cable from the Cowl's gauntlets to the Falcon's bound form, and Sam Wilson's spasms of agony nearly broke his spine as he twitched like a housefly impaled on a toothpick. He could not control the painful contortions and he didn't even feel his teeth biting his tongue. As the Cowl swung him into the side of a building, the unconsciousness that came with the brutal impact was almost a mercy.

The Crimson Cowl gripped the metallic whip that held Captain America's partner, and knew how it could be put to better use.

"Steve!" Bernie shouted again, shaking the unconscious super soldier as she did.

The falling rubble that followed the explosion had been no more consequential to her than falling rain on an umbrella, for she was under the shield of Captain America. It had, however, not had enough room for both of them. Steve, as he so often had, had chosen another's life over his own and taken the brunt of the falling debris. She could barely breathe through the choking dust and her own panic, but she did her best to shout and wake him. She had seen the red, bomb-throwing demon that had caused all this destruction mere moments before the Falcon dive bombed him, but somehow she knew that Sam was the one in trouble.

"You must... wake him up..." Matt Murdock gasped.

"I'm trying!" Bernie said through painfully gritted teeth.

Daredevil was hopelessly pinned under an entire interior wall that had fallen on top of him. It was fortuitous that a mass of bricks had fallen next to him or the plaster wall would have smashed his guts out of his most convenient orifice. Even so, it would take a construction crew or Spider-man to pull that much weight off of him, and Bernie Rosenthal was neither. She had been able to clear the broken bricks off of Steve, but there was a bloody gash right at his hairline. She marveled at how much it was bleeding; enough to soak through the first handkerchief that she had pressed to it and making good progress on a second.

"You have to... I can hear...Falcon's in trouble..." Murdock gasped.

Bernie only sighed in relief, seeing Steve's eyes flutter open. The sounds of sirens were pouring from the street below, and help had to be on the way. The odd concussion bombs that had caused all this damage had not caused a fire yet, but it was only a matter of time until the damaged electrical system did that on its own.

"Steve." She said to the clear blue eyes looking up at her.

"Bernie... what... what happened?" Steve mumbled in confusion.

"Steve... how many fingers am I holding up?" She asked, not knowing what else to do.

What... two." He responded correctly.

"Follow my finger with your eyes." She instructed, feeling foolish as he easily did so.

"What are you... going to do next... take blood pressure?" Murdock groaned sarcastically.

"What year is it?" She asked Steve, ignoring the pinned vigilante.

"1945." Steve said.

"Well... two out of three isn't bad." Bernie laughed, "You have to get up, Steve. Sam needs you. Can you do it?"

"Yes." Steve said, even as he braced himself on his elbow "I can do it."

Bernie helped him to his feet, but regretted it even as she did. She could feel him shaking with effort, and wondered if he could even keep his feet. He shook his head a few times and blinked blood out of his eye before wiping at the steady flow that came from his brow with the back of his glove. If he noticed that it was his blood, or if he knew that he was wounded, he didn't comment. He just pulled on his mask and picked up his shield, but there was a moment of almost comedic surprise when he saw Daredevil's head and shoulders peeking out of nearby rubble.

"I'll get you out." Captain America promised him, somewhat naively.

"There's no time..." Daredevil coughed "Sam and the... Cowl on the roof... Cowl's going to kill him... firemen coming upstairs..."

But then Daredevil could speak no more, his mouth just moved. There was one thing he needed to tell Captain America above all things, but he just could not force his compressed lungs to do it.

"I'll be back for you." Steve said, with so much sincerity that Matt Murdock believed him. He wondered if anyone ever believed anything he said as much as any words that came from this man.

"I'll run to get the firemen." Bernie said, although she had no idea how Matt could possibly know that they were coming... or that Sam and the Cowl were on the roof for that matter.

Bernie ran for the stairs, and Steve followed. In truth, had he not suffered that head injury there was no way that he would have left Daredevil behind. He was still in 1945; still in the mind of the young man who always followed orders because he didn't know what else to do. Because he had nowhere else to go and nobody to turn to. So he followed Bernie to the stairwell, and nearly followed her downward before realizing that he must go up... because that is what they told him he had to do. That was his mission. So he ran up the stairs, taking two or three at a time even though a ordinary man in his condition could not have crawled up stairs. Years of experience fighting through pain, injury, and disorientation combined to propel him up those stairs. But he was not well. There was a bruise on the left hemisphere on his brain and the swelling was threatening to cause brain damage. It would take several hours for him to be anything close to normal, but he did not have several hours. Even in his current state he understood that much.

When he finally found the door to the roof he put down his shield and smashed right through it.

"My, what a dramatic entrance." The electronic voice greeted him, sounding devoid of both emotion and surprise as the wooden shards of the door rained around the Crimson Cowl's form.

Captain America's chest heaved from the exertion of running up ten flights of stairs in less than a minute, but even if he had breath and were not addled by a mild concussion he probably would not have wasted words on this madman. He heaved his shield at the villain with all his strength, but in the blink of an eye he was no longer there. He looked on with puzzlement as his shield flew across the street and broke a window. Although a battle-ready Captain might have already formulated a new strategy, he could do nothing but stare at the place where the Crimson Cowl had been. Had he been fooled by a hologram? It was so real...

His fractured thoughts were wrenched from the Cowl, however, as soon as he saw the Falcon. The Avian Avenger was pinned to a nearby chimney by the wrists, crucified with a pair of forked pylons that formed a cruel handcuff on each wrist. He wasn't moving, not even the visible rise and fall of a breathing chest. Sam's costume was in tatters, as if he had been flayed with a bull whip. Blood was running from a dozen wounds to pool under him, as well as from his swollen lips and puffy eyelids. He had been beaten nearly unrecognizable, and a horror fell over him the likes of which he had not felt since... since...

Roscoe.

The Falcon was in the exact same pose as Roscoe, the youth who had naively tried to impersonate him during the time when he had become Nomad. This villain, the Crimson Cowl, knew far more about him than he let on. Even his addled mind raced though the lists of suspects who might know...

He was lifted off the ground by the blow that collided with his chin. The savage uppercut nearly cost him his hard won consciousness, but his battle-honed reflexes took over. It was the Crimson Cowl's turn to fly through the air as the Captain's foot met his masked chin with a solid cracking noise; a windmill kick that took the momentum of the Cowl's own punch and turned it against him. The villain landed flat on his back even as Captain America landed on his feet in a three-point stance. He saw that the Captain was confused, shaking his head even as he remained in a battle ready position. The malignant mind under the Crimson Cowl resolved never to try that particular trick on the super soldier again. Instead, he threw another explosive charge over Cap's head and down the stairwell. Captain America easily cart wheeled out of the way of the blast, but the resulting cloud of debris gave the Cowl something to hide behind as he fought his way to his feet and strategically withdrew to where he hoped to fight this battle. He had hoped to simply Cole-cock the soldier and kick him down a few flights of stairs before the battle began in earnest, but now realized that he had been too concerned with torturing Falcon and not enough with setting up a proper ambush. Had he done that, he might have been curb stomping the living legend on the corner of a staircase instead of wondering if his jaw was broken. He was smart enough to know that he was no match for this man in a fair fight, and thus had no intention of fighting fairly.

Steve Rogers, on the other hand, felt much better. The adrenaline that often surged after first contact in combat electrified every cell in his body, overcoming the blurry disorientation of the concussion. His body threw his addled mind out of the driver's seat and his instincts took over. With amazing speed he ran though the obscuring cloud of dust and took to the air like a circus acrobat, back flipping in mid air to sail over the Cowl's head and land between the villain and his chosen battleground. He saw two milky-white eyes widen in surprise under the darkness of the Cowl for a moment before the pounding force of his fist obscured them. The Crimson figure stumbled back before taking another punch, a knee to the diaphragm, and a forearm smash on each shoulder. Beneath that assault, the Crimson Cowl fell to his knees before the Living Legend of World War Two... who simply stood and waited. Instinct, it seemed, could only take him so far. With his enemy down, helpless and beaten, he didn't know what to do. The fight could not be over so easily. The fight had to continue. Yet he could not hit this helpless, beaten man could he? So he did nothing... could do nothing... but watch and wait. The Cowl, as confused as he was by this hesitation, took it for all it was worth, falling forward even as he was gasping for what little breath he could draw into his bruised diaphragm. He lay flat, somehow knowing that playing possum was the best play at this moment. He reached out mentally to his glider, aiming it for Captain America's head but knew that even as it sped from its hiding place the soldier would be able to duck its clumsy attack. He was counting on it.

Cap did duck as soon as he heard the speeding glider, coming down to all fours even as it sailed though where his head had been, but all that the Crimson Cowl had needed was that momentary distraction.

Cap barely had registered the hand grasping his wrist before the explosion of pain took over his entire being. His legs kicked out behind him like a donkey kick and his eyes bulged. He had felt this pain before, but couldn't put a name to it. He writhed and screamed as his entire body glowed with the radiance of what the Crimson Cowl was conducting through his Gauntlets, but the battered mastermind knew that his reserves were low; and alarm beeping in his ears was telling him that he was nearly out of energy. It would not be enough to finish Captain America. Even in those last few moments, when the casual observer probably could have made out the dark mass of Steve Rogers' skeleton floating in his glowing flesh, the soldier clung to his consciousness like a drowning sailor clutching a piece of flotsam. With a pathetic sputter, the energy in the Cowl's gauntlets died, and he cursed himself for wasting so much on the Falcon. If he was to lose this battle, it was because of his own arrogance. The choice he had to make now he had wanted to avoid at all costs, but it seemed the only way. Every other weapon he had at had was too much of a risk, because he wanted to take Captain America from this place alive. If he were to do that, he would have to use his fists.

As the pain ceased, Captain America clenched and unclenched his fists, grasping for the familiar shield that was as much a part of him as his own body... but it was gone. Between a concussion, a solid blow to the chin, and the agony that had coursed through his body, no one could blame him for staying down. But the very nature of the man would not let him. He was up to a sitting position even as the Cowl battled to achieve his feet, but the effort caused a misty spray of saliva to burst from his mouth. He clawed his way to his hands and knees as the Cowl swayed before him, and was up on one knee before the criminal's kick left him flat on his back again. He looked up in surprise as the Cowl groaned and shook, slowly expanding even before his eyes. The man who had been smaller than him quickly took on the dimensions of the Hulk, nine feet tall if he were an inch. From the Cowl's perspective, the solution he had injected was painful, temporary, and necessary. It would give him great size and strength at a great price... but one he was more than willing to pay.

He moved with incredible speed for one his size, and stomped down at Captain America's chest. The disoriented Captain attempted to block it with a shield he did not possess, but still managed to keep his ribcage from being smashed by blocking it with his arm. The force of the blow was incredible, however, and more than the tar-and-plaster roofing below them could withstand. Observers would hear the blow on the street and worry that the entire building was going to collapse.

The Crimson Cowl stomped Captain America through the roof and into the apartment below it.

Cap shook his head as the dust settled, wondering why he was lying on such a soft surface, but only had a moment to wonder before a nine foot tall, five hundred pound mass landed on him and smashed him through another floor. He had almost gotten his wits when a fist the size of a holiday ham punched him through another. He kicked out even as he was punched, and heard the rewarding groan of pain as it smacked the Cowl's all-too-human flesh with great force. He grappled one huge arm and successfully leveraged it behind his enormous opponent, but he seemed to momentarily grow even more as he strained to hold on. His vision disappeared as suddenly as if the lights had been turned off when the Cowl's huge hand palmed his skull like a baseball. He trapped the wrist in a death grip, and given a moment he could have broken the hold as well as the wrist... but he did not have a moment. Steve was hoisted from his feet and smashed headfirst through yet another floor, causing an explosion of light within his head almost as great as the one his memory would never let him forget. He fell through an apartment tenants coffee table, and could not force himself to get up even when he heard the great weight land next to him. He did not feel even feel the next punch, or the one after that. Five floors down, Captain America finally sunk into unconsciousness.

The huge form of the Crimson Cowl bellowed in triumph.

Sam Wilson fought his way back to consciousness the same way he always fought; with blind determination. He had been awake when the battle began but unable to see because his eyes where glued shut with his own blood. Yet when they finally pulled open, he wished that he could not see the sight before him: The Cowl stomping Captain America through a roof. He tried to speak then, shout out or do anything to distract the Cowl from what he was doing. All that came out of him mouth was a bloody bubble that burst wetly and was followed by a low groan. He felt as if he was swelling on the inside, and had no idea if he had ever been hurt this badly. Even worse was the panic he felt in his mind, not from his but from Redwing who had watched everything. It had taken all of his will to keep the Falcon who was his most trusted friend from interfering. He knew that this monster in red would kill the bird without losing a wink of sleep, and he could not risk that. Besides that, he knew that the falcon was his only chance to follow this madman back to whatever lair he had hidden himself in for so long, and pull him back into the light. That was why, even as the Cowl's head emerged from the hole, Sam allowed his chin to fall back to his chest and his eyes to close. If Steve was beaten, he was his only hope. He heard the Cowl approach, and watched him through Redwing's eyes. The red figure was huge, but slowly shrunk to his previous size. Cap was nowhere to be seen, and that was like ice in his gut but somehow gave him hope. To his relief, the Cowl didn't even give his crucified figure a second look before leaping on his glider and soaring off.

_Follow him... stay out of sight... _he commanded Redwing, but could take no more pain before the darkness once more reclaimed him.

Several stories below, a crew of firefighters labored to pry Daredevil out of the vice grip of the fallen wall. They had succeeded in giving him enough room to breathe and to convince him that he didn't have broken ribs. But he was disheartened at the sounds of battle above him coming to an abrupt conclusion. There were only two things that he knew for sure: that the firemen would be able to free him within two or three minutes... and that it would be too late. The sound of the glider signaled his escape, but the damage had been done. At least, that was what he thought until he realized the direction the glider was going. It was not going away, toward whatever sanctum this self styled mastermind had been plotting from. Instead, it was going downward... toward the street. Matt's thoughts raced as he imagined the maniac attacking the crowd. That was something that he could never allow to happen. He knew that, whatever his adversaries intentions, this miscalculation might give him the few precious moments that he needed. He would use them for all they were worth; crushing his own body with muscles that he hadn't even known existed before a cruel old man named Stick taught a 12 year old blind kid how to squirm through prison bars and storm drains. He would get out of this, and he would stop him once and for all. There was no other alternative, after all. Falcon was down, the Captain was down, and the emergency transmitter that the Wasp had given him when they split up had failed to activate.

Matt Murdock was on his own, which was how it had always been.

Bernie had reached street level after running at full tilt down the stairs with no heels on her broken shoes. Her mind refused to process all that was happening. In the past thirty minutes she had broken up with Steve forever, agreed to marry him, had her apartment blown up by a raving maniac... it was all too much. At least she had been coherent enough to tell the firemen where Daredevil was before she became totally hysterical. One fireman had offered to take her down the stairs, but she hadn't even heard him before running down the stairs herself. She looked back only once; overcome with regret at how she had ran away from Steve without so much as a goodbye. What kind of wife was she going to make for him? She hadn't even said goodbye to him. What if he was killed? He was already hurt and she still let him go up to face that killer...

And that was how she turned her ankle.

"Arrggggh!" She howled in disbelief as she twisted in midair and fell backward down the stairs.

She was lucky on two counts. The first was that she only tumbled down one remaining flight of stairs. The other was that there were FDNY paramedics waiting at the bottom.

"Are you ok ma'am? Are you ok?" She heard through the haze of her pain.

As that haze cleared she saw that it was coming from a round-jowled mook with the Brooklyn accent shouting down at her with Gyro-tinged breath. She smiled up at him and laughed painfully, then laughed more at his puzzled look. All that she could think of was Steve's story, now told many months ago, falling down the stares because of a backward glance. Maybe... just maybe... they were meant to be together after all.

"Everything's gonna be alright ma'am." A uniformed police officer insisted as he helped her to his patrol car. "The ambulances are all full, but I can give you a ride to the hospital."

"Thank you, officer." She said as he helped her into the car.

He didn't say at thing, because he was too busy looking up at what was swooping down at them.

"Holy hell!" The cop yelled.

Bernie's shocked face stared out from the police cruiser, overlapped with the translucent reflection of the approaching red menace that hovered over the crowd without a care to the pain and screams below him.

"No..." Bernie mouthed silently. It couldn't be. He couldn't have beaten Steve... Captain America always won... he couldn't be...

"Buckle up! I'm getting us the hell out of here!" The Cop screamed from the Driver's side a second before the door slammed. She had been so shocked that she hadn't seen him run all the way around the car.

"Okay..." was all that could say, and weakly at that as the cruiser slammed into reverse and peeled off at least 100 miles worth of tread.

Her stomach was left behind as the Cop tore off the most impressive reverse bootleggers turn that she had ever seen outside of a 1970's Gene Hackman movie. She never thought that she would be able to see one from INSIDE a car. She was glad she had the presence of mind to buckle her seat belt. The roar of the cruiser's suped-up engine hitting overdrive filled her ears as she saw the relentless, flying form closing the gap in the rearview mirror.

"What the hell is goin' on!" The Policeman howled as he ran a red light and almost caused an accident, turning on his sirens almost as an afterthought. "Why the hell is he chasing us?"

It seemed as if her rescuer, her protector, was just as scared and puzzled as she was.

Sometimes there is no point in wondering how things might have been different. Spending too much time contemplating the road not traveled could consume the life of a man. In this case, the patrolman could have easily taken a left instead of a right, heading for the Brooklyn bridge instead of the traffic snarl that was forming in the wake of a collision accident that had been announced on his radio moments before the Cowl's appearance. But he did take that right, and had no choice but to swerve left and brake hard to avoid hitting the rear bumper of a Ford Pinto at high speed. Instead, he hit a parked yellow cab, driving both of them into a nearby alleyway between two office buildings. Bernie and the cop screamed as the explosion of air bags filled their fields of vision.

Minutes passed, with nobody coming to check on the victims of the accident. Everybody on that block was too busy running somewhere else.

The police officer punched down his airbag, eliciting flatulent sounds from it until it was out of his way. With a single glance he could see that the woman beside him was still breathing, but she wasn't moving. He reached under his dash and grabbed the familiar shape of the shotgun that waited there for him. Officer Davis was young and idealistic, but he was also scared out of ten years of his life. He didn't want to do this, but he had been trained too well by the NYPD to just sit down here and do nothing while this red weirdo grabbed this women. Somewhere, in his developing cop instincts, he knew that she was who he was after. The force didn't pay him enough to get into gunfights with flying super creeps with the power to blow up buildings, but he had no choice. No choice at all.

"Give me a break." Davis said to no one in particular as he struggled with the door.

Just as soon as he opened it, the moment he stumbled out of it, he wished that it had stayed closed.

"Well now, officer" The arrogant electronic garble came from above, sounding like the phone voice of a serial killer in a crappy movie. "That was an invigorating chase, wasn't it?"

"Get down here and get those hands where I can see them." The cop yelled at his floating foe as he cocked the shotgun.

"You have more balls than brains, officer." The Cowl observed.

"You ain't gonna have either one if you don't grab some sky, fella!"

The sound that emitted from the Cowl sounded like a snort.

"That's it…" the cop growled, but before he could pull his trigger the Cowl made his move.

As the red cloaked figure hurled what looked like a Frisbee at him, Officer Davis nearly evacuated his bowels as the thought of all those explosions filled his mind. He imagined the Frisbee turning the entire alley into a fireball that would melt his flesh, and that though made his shot go wild as he pulled back the shotgun into a defensive position. Yet, when the disc attached to his chest like a refrigerator magnet, all that he could do was look at it for a moment that seemed to last more than a minute. He thought that it had killed him, because he was overcome with a floating sensation. It was only after his feet rose off the ground that he realized that it was no sensation… he WAS floating.

"What the $!" The cop yelled as he pumped another round into the chamber. Perhaps had he a moment to think he would not have done what he did next, but decisions made in haste were no easier to undo than those well considered. The shotgun blast propelled his weightless form across the alley as if he were holding on to a jet engine, and the bone jarring collision with the brick wall of the office building knocked him cold. He continued to climb as quickly as helium filled balloon as the Cowl shook his head at the foolishness of the man's attempt at resistance.

It was only a second later that the Cowl was howling in pain.

The collision of the two Crimson figures should have ended the fight before it began. Both of Daredevil's feet collided with the Crimson Cowl's lower back with enough force to snap his lumbar and leave him wondering how he was going to crap without assistance for the rest of his life. Perhaps unfortunately, the anti gravity glider he was riding was of the same technology as the disc that he had affixed to the policeman, and the blow simply propelled him forward instead of breaking him in half. He would still feel the pain of that strike for a week, however, along with the many blows to come.

"Where's Captain America!" Daredevil shouted as he landed in a low crouch and watched the Cowl bounce off the roof of the crashed taxi. When he got no answer save an electronic groan he bounded over the cab and straddled the fallen criminal.

"Where is he!" Daredevil snarled, driving his fist into the Cowl's solar plexus.

The Cowl curled into a nearly fetal position, coughing and gagging.

It was only then that Daredevil his radar sense informed him of a form floating above him, and for a moment he thought that he was under attack by a second assailant. Yet, when his senses zeroed in on the target he could tell that it was an unconscious man that smelled of cordite. In an instant the blind lawyer knew that if he didn't catch him now he might not get another chance, and whoever that poor soul was might explode in the vacuum of space before anyone knew that he was in trouble. Without thought, his billy club snapped up and fired a line with a weighted lead ball on the end. He could tell by the tension that it had struck home wrapping two or three times around the man's leg. He didn't have the time to pull him down before the cowl recovered, but he could still anchor him to the nearest fire hydrant. Daredevil didn't give a thought to taking his eyes off of the Crimson Cowl as he tied the man down. His eyes didn't work anyway, and he had other ways of keeping tabs on him.

The Cowl struggled to his feet, feeling as if he had been gut shot. His stomach and back were both screaming, and he almost laughed at how swiftly events had turned against him. He had been so certain that Daredevil would stay incapacitated after that hypersonic burst that had been custom made to take him out. He had not spared the vigilante another thought, and had paid for his arrogance. He would not make that mistake twice. He reached for the device on his belt, fully intending to keep it turned on until blood ran from this freak's ears… but his heart sank. Somewhere during this melee the gadget had been smashed into a mess of dangling wires and exposed circuits.

"So we meet at last." The Cowl coughed as he leaned against the taxi, but he was put on his back a second later by a roundhouse right from the Man Without Fear.

"We've fought before." Daredevil said with certainty.

"Have we?" The Cowl said from the ground "You must have me confused with somebody else."

"No." Daredevil stated "I know who…"

Murdock stopped in his tracks, and his fists unclenched. There was no doubt, he knew now. You could disguise a voice, but not a heartbeat.

"You… you're not…"

He never got a chance to finish that sentence, because from beneath the Crimson Cowl's cloak a six foot retractable prod burst forth, catching Daredevil right between the Ds on his chest and setting his nerve endings on fire. It had originally been designed as a cattle prod, but it would serve to put the Hero of Hell's Kitchen out of this fight. The Cowl knew that he had an enormous threshold for pain despite his super sensitive sense of touch, but every man had his limits.

"You are right." The Crimson Cowl told his twitching form as he climbed to his feet "You were wrong."

The villain turned to the wreck of the police car as he heard more sirens approaching. After the day he had been suffering through, he sincerely hoped that the Rosenthal woman would give him no trouble… for her sake.

**Next: The Crimson Cowl (Part Two)**

_Can this be? Captain America, the Falcon, and Daredevil have fallen? The Avengers helpless? The Crimson Cowl Triumphant? Tune in next update, true believers!_


	23. The Crimson Cowl: Part 2

**Author's Notes: Oh. My. God. I thought that this update would never come. I hope that someone out there is still reading this story, and if they do they will take this update as the fulfillment of a difficult promise. I hope that you will not be disappointed. Once again, thank you all for all your patience and all of your reviews. I hope that you have words for me at the conclusion of this chapter. Without further ado… **

* * *

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Chapter 23: The Crimson Cowl (Part Two)**

1945

The men in the smoke filled room disagreed on a great many things. They disagreed on whether Germany or Japan had been the larger threat, and which one should have been the target of greatest attention. They disagreed on the use of the weapon that most of them knew about but none of them wanted to talk about. They disagreed on the merit of the planned invasion of Japan. They disagreed on the use of super powered beings in said invasion. They disagreed on the involvement of European allies in said invasion. They disagreed on what to do in the event of victory over Japan, and if the war should end or simply shift to their expansionist Soviet Allies. They disagreed on the conduct of war, spoils of war, and responsibilities of the victorious. Most of all, they disagreed on the fate of one man: a man that some respected and many feared. But there was one thing that they could agree on: Captain Steven Rogers was a US Army soldier, and that made him a US Army problem.

"He thinks he's a god." The young Major concluded, partially from his own conversations and observations with the man and partially telling the assembled Generals what they wanted to hear.

The reaction was louder than he thought it would be, but once everyone stopped exclaiming at once the young psychiatrist in the military uniform managed to field the one true question. In a room full of the old men who were used to their voice being the only one that mattered, it was no mean feat.

"What the hell brings you to that conclusion, Major?" Lieutenant General Philips bellowed through the cacophony of outrage.

"I didn't mean to be misunderstood. He isn't delusional or possessed of the belief that he possesses divine power. Rather, he describes himself in a manner to unconsciously parallel the classical definition of a deity. A deity is not defined by power so much as what it represents or symbolizes, and he believes that he is a symbol to the American people just as much as Mercury or Zeus might have been to Ancient Greeks. He has said in our sessions that he believes he is... serving something higher than the military. That he himself represents the entire American people in a way that even the President cannot. That he is above military command authority and should operate independently. He has said that he is a symbol of the American dream... the epitome of freedom, and that it is impossible for him to represent something he doesn't have."

"What about the issue of deadly force?" General Rickart asked.

"He believes that - as a representative of this higher authority - it is morally irresponsible for him to kill his enemies when it is within his power to prevent it. Moreover, he believes that this mandate was reinforced by the choice of weapon that he was trained with and the mission he was given. Even though, as I have said, he holds the belief that he has transcended that initial mission. This is what has put us on the horns of this dilemma, because he is insisting that he has to see the President. He contends that he can convince him not the use... the weapon."

"What good is a soldier that won't kill?" A younger Brigadier General complained.

"That is the central question." General Macarthur piped up, highjacking the question masterfully.

"That is just the thing. He does not see himself as a soldier anymore. He believes he is something more."

"He is more." General Phillips contended. "However, I do not think that he has forgotten what he is."

"Neither have any of us!" Patton fired off in his nails-on-a-chalkboard voice "That boy was worth a whole Division to me in Europe!"

"Nothing has changed... except the whole world." A serene voice came through the chaotic grumbling, bringing them all to silence.

All eyes moved to the Chief of Staff as he considered his next words.

"You all say that he hasn't been himself since the death of his partner." General Marshall finally said "I say that he has... only more than ever before. But his missions have changed because Sergeant Barnes is no longer with him to do the things that he would never do… the things that needed to be done. The whole world... the whole scope of our conflict has changed. We are on the precipice of a war that could very well never end until all of civilization is burned to cinders. We need a Captain America that understands this, and is willing to do what needs to be done to prevent this."

"The man is a hero!" Patton snapped at Marshall with an audacity that only the tanker possessed.

"The man is a weakling!" Macarthur fired back, not giving Marshall the chance the rebuke Patton on his own.

"We all have our own opinions as to what he is, but what is at issue here is what use can he be to us?" General Ross said, dangerously interposing himself between two dangerous opponents.

"What do you say, Bill? He's your boy." General Eisenhower said to Bill Donovan, who had done his best to disappear in this crowd.

"There are only three options, sir." General Donovan said. "Just as long as we understand this, it will be easier to accept a course of action."

"What are these options, as you see it?" Ike threw the ball into Donovan's court.

"First of all, we could kill him." Donovan said.

The room was stunned into silence.

"The world already believes he is dead. That is the story we fed them after the explosion, when the men on the ground believed that the Captain would be more valuable both as a martyr and a clandestine agent. They were right about the former, as many victories were recorded the day that the news broke. They were not so right about the latter, as the Captain refused the order to go into deep cover and receive the training that would be necessary for his... new life. Killing him would simply be a matter of sticking to our story and cutting our losses."

"That is not acceptable." General Phillips growled.

"It is not the most ideal option, I agree." Donovan said "That is why I brought it up first."

"It would work." Macarthur contended, "The President has already found another clown to fill the suit. He refuses his new mission. I say he is expendable."

"I respectfully disagree, sir." Phillips fired back.

"At any rate, one thing is for certain. Because of that development he can never be allowed to become Captain America again." Donovan reasonably stated. "Which brings us to option two…"

"What is that?" Marshall said sternly, not one for dramatic pauses.

"We let him go." Donovan said, "We let him return to civilian life like so many other soldiers will have to after this war. If we ever have need of him again, his muscles aren't going anywhere."

"Outrageous." Ross said, "Not only is it a waste of a unique resource, but he knows too much. Almost everything he knows is far above his pay grade, and if he ever gets old and cynical enough to consider blackmail... who knows the damage he could do."

"Again, that makes less than an ideal option. Luckily, there is a third. Isn't that right, General Phillips?"

Phillips slowly stood up from the table, knowing what the man was talking about and knowing full well why he wanted him to be the one to explain it. He was the only one with the background and the credibility to make the suggestion not sound like science fiction.

"It was a rumor that gave us the idea." General Phillips said "A rumor that sounded preposterous, but that our scientists say is possible. After how they did on their last little project, I am inclined to believe them."

"What was the rumor?" Ross asked with his typical gruff curiosity.

"It came from the Russians. A couple of drunk soldiers in Berlin talking about something called the Winter Soldier project."

"Winter Soldier?" General Toombs scoffed. "Aren't they all?"

Phillips ignored him and pressed on.

"The Russians were saying that their scientists were experimenting with freezing dangerous superhumans in the effort to put them in a state of suspended animation until such a time as they may be needed again. Our scientists say that this theory is called Cryogenics, and that it is something that can be accomplished with the technology on hand. All that is needed is a willing subject."

"Sounds like Bullshit to me." Patton said frankly.

More than a few faces grimaced at the profane General.

"Are you proposing that we make Rogers this experiment?" Macarthur asked.

"I am proposing that we consider the possibility that there will be a time when the world needs him again."

"You insist that the subject must be willing. Why couldn't we just force Rogers to do it?" Macarthur pressed.

"The boys in the lab refuse to even attempt this experiment on someone who is not a willing subject. It is too dangerous."

"Where have I heard that before?" Patton griped.

"What leads you to believe that the Captain would submit to this?" General Ross asked.

"I think that is a question that should be posed to Major Mayes." General Phillips demurred.

All eyes turned to the young Psychiatrist

"He is... a complex and unique case." The Major said, "He volunteered for a dangerous experiment once before, and there is a great possibility that he would do so again... if the fate of the nation were on the line."

"It is." General Bradley said, "All that we have to do is make him see it that way."

"So what about it, Sir." General Ross addressed Eisenhower. "Which option are we going to proceed with?"

The bald General thought it over for a short period of time that seemed like an eternity. It may have taken time for him to reach a conclusion, but everyone in the room knew that once it was reached it would be as final as the word of God.

"We go forward with the third option." General Eisenhower pronounced.

"What if it does not succeed, Sir?" General Marshall ventured.

"Then there is always the first." Macarthur said with a vicious spark in his eye.

The men disagreed on many things, but thought that they knew everything. None of them had given a thought to the attachés standing in the shadows. Each of the Generals had brought one, but in uniform they all looked alike. The attaché for General Phillips did his best to show no emotion, hidden behind his black dyed hair and false mustache. Phillips spared a nervous glance over his shoulder, just to make certain that the dispassionate façade was still in place. They had wanted a clandestine agent, and he was already well enough trained for it. He had been doing it for more than half a decade now.

_I am proposing that we consider the possibility that there will be a time when the world needs him again _General Donovan had said. This statement hurt more than any of the others, and had been the single moment where his reserve has almost broken. The implications of this statement couldn't possibly be any clearer. What Colonel Toombs had told him was true.

He wasn't needed anymore.

* * *

_I love you…_

_He was a brave lad, but he's gone now…_

_Naslund?_

_There is another war… a war for the future…_

_Why me… why now?_

_Adam II? That's nuts…_

_You're the only one who can do it…_

_Not for you… not for the president… not for the nation… for the people._

_Cold… so cold…_

_Captain?_

_I should have killed you when I had the chance…_

_Out of respect…_

_Bring him in…_

_Is he a soldier?_

_Look at him…under the uniform… the colorful costume…_

_NO! BUCKY! NO!_

_Try to conquer me…_

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

A blue eye clouded with the remnants of a concussion opened to regard the droplets falling toward the face it belonged to, and each successive droplet returned another modicum of consciousness. It was dark, it was cold, and it seemed like he had been asleep for a very long time. A nearly lucid dream, so real it had outstripped reality, had become a disjointed, confused blur of events that had only terminated with the opening of his eyes. He paid them no heed, because he remembered them all. There was a time when he had not remembered, only for a few days really, and since saw no reason to tell anyone. By then there were aliens that looked like vegetables, the Incredible Hulk, Namor, Spider Man Robots, Kang the Conqueror, Masters of Evil… it seemed to be something else every week. Soon it came to pass that no one cared how he had been frozen… they were just glad to have him back. He had been asked no questions and, thus, told no lies.

He rolled over, out of the path of the dripping water, and found his shield lying directly next to him. The last thing that he remembered before losing consciousness was the Cowl looming over him, impossibly huge. The concussion that had shaken his senses was gone, although his other injuries were not so quick to heal. The Cowl had beaten him like a borrowed mule. His head was clear, but his body felt like he had been soaked in meat tenderizer and pounded with a sledgehammer. He was certain that some of his bruises had bruises, but he had fought in worse shape than this before.

"Pain lets you know… that you're alive…" He gasped as he pulled himself to his feet.

Looking around, he was surprised at his situation. He had fully expected to awake chained to a wall or encased in some kind of Superhero Crucifixion Device. That was what criminal masterminds favored while gloating… but there were no restraints in sight. No gloating mastermind, either. There was just an empty concrete room that didn't even possess a door, but rather a portal leading out into a lighted corridor. As he quietly picked up his shield, he closed his eyes and listened for any sound that might be emanating from beyond this dark room, but there was nothing but a low hum that sounded like electricity coursing through the coils of a refrigerator.

_What is your game, Cowl? _Captain America asked himself as he quietly padded toward the portal and looked out into the corridor. It appeared to be some kind of subterranean tunnel lighted with a generous assortment of droplights. As far as super villain dungeons went, this was amateurish at best. _Did you just lay me down there and hope that I would die from my injuries?_

It didn't trouble him too much. He had known enough individuals like the Cowl to understand the arrogance that clouded their judgment.

* * *

"What the hell is going on today?" Captain Marvel complained. 

"Same thing that always happens." Wonder Man said "We end up a day late and a dollar short."

The two flew together over the damage, looking at the blocks of devastation that the Crimson Cowl left and the efforts the police were making in restoring traffic patterns. They finally landed on the adjacent building that Falcon had rammed the Cowl into. Politics still didn't permit aircraft into the city limits, so the Avengers had needed to fly from La Guardia to Brooklyn under their own power, but variations in flight speed had become a problem. Captain Marvel had arrived first, Simon second, and they were still waiting on the Wasp and Darkhawk. Everyone else had stayed in Westchester.

"I can fly the speed of light." Monica Rambeau said with the dignified tone that she added to every statement Simon had ever heard her make. "If we had a clue where he was… just one clue… I could be there in an instant."

"We'll find him." Simon said "Even if we don't… he has a way of coming out on top anyway."

"We can only hope." she sighed "We can hope that he is doing better than this new Avengers team has been doing."

"We need to give it time." Simon said "Everybody is here because they believe in what we are doing. When we get used to working together, when we iron out our differences, this could be the best Avengers team the world has ever seen."

"That is a pretty bold statement." Monica said with a half-smile.

"I've been on quite a few of these teams. On the east coast, the west coast, it never really mattered. We can make this work. We always make it work."

Silence was between them for a minute, as they regarded the destruction evident on Bernie's brownstone.

"Do you want to mention the elephant in the corner, or should I?" Monica asked.

"I guess you'll have to do it."

"You didn't say a word to Wanda or the Vision."

"There wasn't anything to say." Simon said softly "Three people… like us… who have been so close… we all know what we would say anyway. Those things… those words that hurt… they aren't worth saying."

"Maybe you could explain to them…"

"It would never be enough." Simon said "It won't bring them back. They drew a line in the sand and I stepped over it."

"It that really the end of it?"

"We can only hope."

"About Wanda… the choice that she made… It didn't have anything to do with yours… did it?"

Simon's eyes flared briefly a brighter red, and then seemed to calm.

"Considering how close that vote was… and how it turned out… we better not go there." Simon said, as reasonably as he could.

Captain Marvel only nodded.

"I know that we have not served together very often… you always seem to be going when I'm coming. If you ever need to talk to someone, and you can't talk to anybody else… think about me." Monica said, placing one hand on his shoulder.

Simon smiled at her. "I just might take you up on that."

"The decisions we made in the past… we can't unmake them." Monica said "But it is within our power to move on to new ones."

* * *

"Decisions, decisions." The Crimson Cowl said, looking to where Bernadette Rosenthal was cowering in the transparent cube he had encased her in. 

She shouted something at him, but the soundproof glass muffled it into unrecognizable noise. It was not altogether a mystery what she had said, though, because the letter f and the hard o were very easy to read on lips.

The Crimson Cowl gave her no more thought at he turned to regard this hideout. It was perfect for his purposes. It was nothing more than a pair of five story buildings in very close proximity, both capped with a top floor that was constructed like a greenhouse. The other glass level was darkened, though, and this one was flooded by the artificial floodlights. An early February dusk was falling, and this was not a time for darkness as much as for illumination. Once upon a time it had been the dream of a scientist to build a technology company to rival Stark International, using the tools of his own mind to do it. It had only ever been a pipe dream, though. It had gone under with all of his other dreams. The company that bought it, though, had fared no better and the buildings had sat abandoned since 2001. It made a perfect hideout, the little company that could _not._ It was the ultimate example of hiding in plain sight. The monitors to the security cameras that covered the premises showed him a beaten, but unbroken Captain America limping inevitably toward their confrontation. He was looking forward to it.

"Your fiancé comes to the rescue." The Crimson Cowl laughed at Bernie, although she could no more hear him than he could her.

Bernie hurled more unheard epitaphs.

"Such language." The Cowl said with a clucking of his tongue.

"I think that the lady is entitled." The strong voice came from behind him.

"Captain!" The Cowl whirled to meet the gaze of his enemy, cloak swirling around him. "I am glad that you could make it."

"Let her go, Cowl." Captain America demanded "She has nothing to do with whatever sick game you're playing."

"On the contrary, she is a very important part of the sick game I'm playing." The Cowl chuckled. "She makes a beautiful, excellent hostage."

Captain America flashed the Cowl a look that promised to tear the villain limb from limb.

"If looks could kill, I would be dead." The Cowl stated dryly.

"Why didn't you kill me when you had the chance? Why bring her into this?" Steve said, looking to Bernie with a silent promise.

"I don't want you dead!" The Cowl said, placing his hand on his chest as if wounded by the words. "Who do you think I am? The Red Skull?"

"I don't know who you are."

"Touche." The Cowl laughed "As I was saying, I do not want you dead. Dead, you would only be a martyr. Next week there would be four imposters trying to imitate you as a tribute. Destroyed, you will be neutralized and of no import to my designs."

There was something wrong here. Steve could feel it in his bones. Standing here now, talking to the Cowl, the villain was taking a very familiar tone with him, as if he was someone that he had known for years instead of a stranger. Not as an enemy, for there was not a single note of the frustration that an enemy acquired after a multitude of defeats.

"Who are you?" Cap slowly asked.

"Take off my mask, and you will know." The Cowl challenged. "Truthfully, I have been beaten just as badly as you, and could hardly be a challenge. Strike me down, take my mask. Then you will know who I am."

Cap took a warning step forward.

"Oh! Did I forget to mention the boobie trap?" The Crimson Cowl laughed, holding up a small triggering mechanism. "If I take my thumb off of this trigger, or if that glass is shattered, the glass box fills with VX nerve agent. I must remember to thank the department of defense for inventing such a wonderful substance. You might survive the exposure for a few short moments, but Ms Rosenthal's muscle spasms would break her spine in less than a minute."

Steve's face screwed up in horror.

"You… can't be serious! You are more insane than I thought!"

"I am very serious… but you are right on one count. I am, by definition, insane. Sanity is defined as the structural fit or lack of it between our reactions to the world and what is actually occurring in the world. To engage in reasonable and rational behavior in an unreasonable and irrational world, therefore, is insane. You will also find that I cannot be reasonably held responsible for my actions, which covers the more legalistic definition. I accept your diagnosis, and can only play my part."

Something in the way that electronically scrambled voice was talking was so familiar to him. He just couldn't put his finger on what it was.

"What do you want?" Cap asked as he circled to the left, keeping an eye on both Bernie and the Cowl.

"I want to enlighten you." The Cowl said "I want to show you why you will never win no matter how long or hard you struggle, and why only fools are heroes. You see, Bernie here is perfectly capable of freeing herself. You see the hammer that I provided her on the ground? The glass that surrounds her is not shatterproof, but she knows that the second she hits the glass she will trigger the gas."

"You sadistic bastard." Captain America said.

"Oh, you don't even know the half of it!" the Cowl laughed "I have been watching them squirm for hours!"

It was impossible for Steve to miss the plurality of that statement. He looked to Bernie and saw the helpless tears in her eyes, mouthing silent words at him.

"Oh yes..." The Cowl said in a sardonically grave tone, sounding very pleased with himself "I said them. Did you think that Ms. Rosenthal was my only hostage? She is not the only one you care for, so why would she be my only hostage?"

The Cowl pushed a button on his belt, and the lighthouse on the other tower illuminated brightly, showing an identical glass box. Identical, that is, in all ways save the nature of its occupant.

"Rachel." Captain America said in a tone of total disbelief, seeing Diamondback standing there in an orange prison jumpsuit.

"Oh yes!" The Cowl cackled. "Finally you see... breaking the glass will not trigger the gas in their own box. After all, that would only tend to endanger me were one of them noble enough to try to take me with them in a fit of suicidal desperation. For hours, they both have had the keys to their own freedom in the death of the other. I have spent hours telling them of your love for the other. You should have seen the tears. When I told Rachel of your proposal... oh you should have seen it... she actually picked up the hammer..."

Captain America cleared the distance between them in a second, and his hand encased the fist that was holding the dead-man's switch in a death grip. His other hand found the Cowl's throat, cutting off his laughter. The man was only slightly shorter than him, but Cap heaved him off of the ground and choke-slammed him to the ground.

"Enough." Steve spit, squeezing both hand and throat hard enough to make popping and cracking noises in cartilage and sinew.

"That's the spirit." The Cowl gagged, and the hand that Cap was clutching electrified, sending spasms of pain through the body of the American hero.

Steve fell over backward, unable to maintain his grip as the current stopped.

"You... cough... must be tired of that." The Cowl gasped as he rolled to his side "It is... the last of my power... so you will not have to worry about it further."

As he battled his way to one knee, Cap saw that the switch in the Cowl's hands had been reduced to a melted mess dribbling out of his mangled hand, shooting sparks and rolling smoke. His eyes snapped to Bernie and Rachel, seeing that nothing had changed in their transparent boxes.

"The button was a ruse... one of many... be assured that the gas is not."

"You won't get away with this." Cap growled as he fought his way to his feet.

"They won't make the decision... so you will. If one of these boxes are not smashed... then they will both fill with gas... in a minute and thirty seconds."

"No."

"Oh yes." The Cowl said, finally standing "You will."

A red, white, and blue blur of motion slammed into the cowl, lifting him from his feet and sending him skidding across the shiny metal floor.

"Get up." Cap said, and the Cowl complied.

"Minute twenty six." The Cowl said a second before another punch sent him flying.

"Get up."

"Minute nineteen." Before a kick made his ribs crackle

"Get up."

"Minute and six" Before the shield smashed his cowled face.

"Get up."

The Cowl stayed on all fours, electronically coughing, a small trickle of blood escaping from the darkness of his cowl "This will... be the most... important minute... of your life. Are you to spend it... beating me senseless?"

Cap's fist snatched a handful of his cloak and pulled him to his feet, punching him once, twice, and then hitting him with his elbow. He saw nothing but the red form in front of him and the red haze around him, but then the Cowl fell to his knees and his eyes locked with Bernie. He saw the terror, the sadness, and something else... the desperation. He felt his hand release the Cowl and heard the heavy thud of his limp form hitting the ground. He felt it again, as he looked at her. That feeling of paralysis, of being frozen, that had started this entire grim journey. For a moment he could do nothing but stare, eyes locked with hers. He fell into her pleading eyes, dark and deep brown... just like hers.

"Heh heh... ouch... hee... uh..." The Cowl laughed and gurgled, his voice no longer disguised by the broken throat-mike he had been wearing. "Only forty-five seconds... left... Steve. Who's it going to be?"

He knew the voice, but couldn't believe it. A giant hand reached into the freezing cold that gripped his body and pulled it from the waves of his paralysis.

"Hank?" the question escaped his lips as a whisper.

The beaten, battered man pulled back the hood that concealed his features. His face was bruised and bloodied, but there was no doubt that he was Henry Pym, smiling up with a frozen grin that showed a missing tooth.

"How did you guess?"

"Why?"

"Why have I always betrayed you before?"

Images raced in Cap's mind. A giant hand reaching out of the darkness, a giant fist pounding him through a floor. A stinging beam firing from a glove into the back of a confused young woman, a stinging current burning his own nerves. A paralyzing gas attack... the Crimson Cowl retreating into the smoke... Hank emerging. A sarcastic question of who had been the Crimson Cowl... Hank's hand being raised... he had NEVER been...

"The Crimson Cowl..."

"Ultron. My baby." Hank coughed "The only son I ever had... the only son I ever deserved. Did you know that I walked in on them... Janet and Hawkeye? She was pregnant you know, and he walked away. I would have been the father... a good father. She ended it. She ended us, too. I wasn't always faithful... there was Tigra, others, but it hurt... we could have been a family... not my progeny but still my child. Why? Because it was too hard in this life I chose for us. Ever since Maria. Remember Maria? Why do you think I chose the name Avengers? I was the only one who had something to avenge... something that could never be avenged. Janet. First Tony then Clint... now... another man with wings. Jan. Always looking for angels instead of insects. Look at this place... it was supposed to be my company... my dream... but I was always Avenging and it fell apart. I had to make the choices, and every one cost me. Every one was wrong."

Steve could only stare as Hank babbled. The Avenger stared into space, seeming to have forgotten that Steve was there for a moment. Then he shook his head and his eyes seemed to clear.

"Now it is time for you to choose, Steve." Hank said, almost sadly.

* * *

Janet Van Dyne looked at the sad little apartment, shaking her head. How could she have missed all the signs: the constant distraction, the missed appointments, the excuses? She had thought that it was all just because of her relationship with Kyle... and what had happened before. She never dreamed, never imagined, that the crimson shade she had been chasing could have been the man who had been closer to her than anyone. In some ways, the apartment was what one would expect from a divorced man in his early forties: a sink full of dirty dishes, a pile of unread bills under the mail slot with footprints on them. Empty pizza boxes and take out Chinese containers. But this little apartment was miles away from the Hank Pym she knew; the world renowned scientist who lived in penthouses, swanky lofts, and townhouses by college campuses... not run-down apartments in the Bowery. She would never have even found it had he not given her the forwarding address to his central park west landlord when he moved. Above all else, there was the wall. 

The entire wall was covered. It was almost wallpapered with pictures of every Avenger, with notations under them in red marker anticipating their vote. Mathematical equations she didn't understand interspaced with short comments regarding sociological theorems. There were schematics of the SHIELD helicarrier stolen from Avengers archives. There were rap sheets of the Sinister Syndicate members, and flow charts of plans and back-up plans. It was all incredibly brilliant and possible only for a genius to have formulated.

"It was all so... it fits together so well." Jan marveled. "He did it... he did it all. Why couldn't we see?"

"You know what they say... there are none so blind..." Daredevil said from his perch on the windowsill.

"I'm sorry." The Wasp said sheepishly.

"Don't be. I'm not. We can regret a great many things, but regret does not change anything. What we must concern ourselves with is what we do now."

Wasp nodded silently. They had decided to come here together after meeting up at the site of the disaster in Brooklyn. Daredevil had told her, and only her, about the heartbeat that he had heard moments before losing consciousness. They had decided to come here together, and see this thing through as had always been their intention from the beginning. They hoped to find some clue as to where he had taken Steve, but every writing they found seemed like the ramblings of a madman.

"You're right." Jan finally said "I just don't understand how we could be so wrong."

"We weren't wrong." Daredevil said, leaping from the windowsill to land next to the stack of mail.

"Excuse me?" Wasp said in surprise.

"Everybody leaves a trail... everybody has a scent... Wolverine tracks everybody with it, but I'm no piker myself." Matt said as he picked up one of the letters with a footprint on it and inhaled deeply.

He turned to see the perplexed look on Janet's face.

"He was here." Daredevil said, without a single doubt.

"You did it, Steve... you broke this thing on my neck... the thing that has been controlling me for months... but I can't move."

Not knowing what to think, Cap kneeled next to him and reached behind his neck, feeling a metallic disc with a crack in it.

"The Controller!" Cap yelled.

"No... but I don't know who... the disc commanded me not to remember that... but let me remember everything else." Hank said with tears in his eyes "It made me kidnap Rachel... shrink her just like I shrunk you. There isn't any time. You have fifteen seconds..."

Cap looked to the glass cube and saw that there was a small red digital readout that showed fifteen seconds.

"You can't save them both... the trap makes sure of that... but you can save one of them. Take my mask... it has an air supply in it."

"There was to be an override, a failsafe... something!" Cap yelled at Hank.

"No... once I pushed that button... there was no turning back."

Cap stood up, clutching the Cowl in one hand, but could only look helplessly back and fourth at Bernie and Rachel. He knew, in the end, that there was only one choice he could possibly make. He did not want to make it because it was irrevocable. The damned other tower was close enough that he could see Rachel's green eyes staring at him, telling him silently what he had to do, but he still couldn't bring himself to do it.

"I'm so sorry." He said, although he knew that she couldn't hear, as he saw the digital display reach the five second mark.

He tensed every muscle in his body, and then sprung at Bernie's cube with all his strength. He smashed the prison into a million fragments, and Bernie ducked and covered to avoid the flying glass, but he could hear the pop of the gas canister releasing its deadly payload. He pulled Bernie to her feet, pulled the hood over her face, and was gone in a second. With the mightiest heave he had ever managed, his shield smashed both of the windows between Rachel and himself before barreling into her cube. He followed it with a mad leap through the cloud of broken glass, but was nearly hit by his own shield as it rebounded back at him. His uncanny reflexes allowed him to catch it, but he landed badly when he saw that the shield had bounced off of the cube. It was not glass like the other one had been, but it was filling up with gas just the same.

"No!" Cap screamed, leaping forward with his shield in both hand, smashing into it with all of his might, but he didn't make a crack.

"Force field..." he would never hear the words pass Hank Pym's lips as he lay on the floor of the other building, mere feet from the shell-shocked Bernie Rosenthal and a cloud of deadly gas.

Slam! Slam! Slam! Slam! Slam!

Captain America howled in anguish and frustration as he pounded the force field with all of his might. Few things could have survived the assault of the invulnerable object being pounded into it by someone so strong, but the force field held. He could only watch as Rachel Leighton slowly slid to the ground, her eyes rolling up into her head and both hands clutching her throat, trying to die of asphyxiation rather than inhaling the foul gas… and failing because it was bleeding through her skin.

"No!" Cap screamed, his shield falling from numb fingers to clatter on the metal floor.

He fell to his knees, mirroring her. He reached to where her cheek was, his caress only stopped by the force field. He could not look away. Even as she turned a jaundiced yellow... even as the mucus and saliva spewed from her mouth and nose... even as the blisters started to form and her tears turned to blood. Captain America could only watch as Rachel Leighton died... and he would remember it for the rest of his life.

"Rachel..." He sobbed through his tears when she stopped moving.

* * *

An hour later, Steve Rogers watched a closing ambulance door, with a hardened paramedic holding a handkerchief over his mouth and looking very sick. Rachel Leighton looked very little like herself in death as she did in life, a horrible side effect of a horrible weapon. The gas that had erupted from Bernie's side of the trap had only been chlorine gas, and had dissipated through the hole he had made in the window. Rachel's had been the real thing. He barely felt the trembling form of Bernie against his left side, even though his arm was draped around her. She had been through this before, but he knew that no human being could possibly get used to it. He watched as a second paramedic wheeled Hank in a gurney that immobilized his head. Since he couldn't move there was a large concern that there was a spinal injury, but that couldn't be known until more tests were done at a hospital. 

"Could we ride along?" Steve heard himself say to the paramedic.

"For you, sir... anything." The medic said.

As they screamed through the streets of New York City, Cap sat on one side of the gurney and Bernie on the other, but avoided looking at each other in favor of mutually looking at Henry Pym. The swelling of his facial injuries had become more grotesque, and one of his eyes was closed. He stared at Bernie with his one good eye.

"Words can't say... how sorry I am." He said to her.

"It's alright... I understand... you weren't yourself." She had seen that look once before, after another kidnapping ordeal, when it was coming from the eyes of Jack Monroe. It had been the last time that she saw him alive. It hadn't been his fault either.

"That's the thing... I was myself." Hank said miserably "It used me... it gave me commands... but it let me decide how to follow the orders. I made all the decisions... I made all the plans. It let me remember everything... except who was giving the orders. It was me... it was all..."

Hank Pym's chest hitched, a wet sound came through his nose, his face tightened to fight it off, but he couldn't stop the flow of tears any more than he could hold in the sobs. He cried suddenly and he cried deeply, the enormity of what had happened hitting him for the first time. Bernie threw herself to Hank's chest and put her arms around his body, gripping his shoulders and making soothing sounds, like a mother would make to an infant too young to understand. Steve put his hand on his forehead, as he had unconsciously done to so many wounded soldiers in the past, as if hoping the touch was capable of healing an injury that could never be recovered from. If someone had told him just hours ago that he would be doing this for the Crimson Cowl he never would have believed them.

Steve looked down at one of his oldest friends, the one who had pulled him from the ocean. Used, abused, and completely broken. Converted by an unknown mastermind into an enemy that had put him through a wringer as no one save the Red Skull had ever done. Yet here he was, right in front of him, not able to be held responsible for his own actions. Here he was, an hour after murdering Rachel, and there was no way to avenge her. It didn't make sense. Nothing made sense. This was not a resolution, but the beginning of another search.

"I'm going to find them, Hank." Cap told him "I don't care if it is Hydra, the Secret Empire, or the Maggia... I'm going to hit them all, and I'm going to hit them hard. I'm going to grab every person who could possibly help me do this. Avengers... Fantastic Four... X-men... Defenders if it comes to that. I am never going to rest until I find who is responsible for this and drag them out into the light. I swear to you that they will regret the day they were ever born."

Bernie couldn't believe the anger, the hatred, and the terrible resolve that she heard in Steve's voice. If she was still in shock from her ordeal, that voice pulled her out of it. She completely stopped thinking about herself and started thinking about him. She could see one of his hands shaking, as if he could not stop it from doing it. She remembered how he froze, so indecisive, for nearly half a minute when he realized the grim decision that he had to make. It was the exact same thing that had happened to him at the beginning of this journey... what had gotten him talking to her in the first place. She looked down at the ring, still on her finger, looked back to him, and knew what she had to do.

Steve was sick of hospitals.

"I'm sorry, sir." The receptionist told him, the appellation seeming to carry more respect than formality "Mr. Wilson has already been discharged. The good news is that his injuries were not severe."

It made sense. Hank's bio-electric stings were painful to the nervous system, but did not leave electric burns or permanent damage. The apparent bleeding and bruising caused by the whip must have been painful, but it would take more than that to keep the Falcon down.

"Excuse me sir, I would like to speak with you. Could I have a moment of your time?" A plainclothes police officer said to Cap.

"No problem, officer…"

"Norris." The man said.

The two of them walked away from the reception desk. Even as tired, beaten, and emotionally drained as he was, Steve's instincts were telling him that this wasn't just another cop asking for an autograph or looking to swap some war stories.

"You aren't NYPD, are you?" Cap said simply as they both looked out a nearby window.

"Nope." Norris said.

They looked at each other. There was no trust there. That would make things more difficult.

"I used to be FBI. I used to be SHIELD. I used to be a lot of things. Now I'm a consultant. Sounds like a really could job on paper… but more and more these days people are ignoring my council."

"So are you here to give me council?"

"Yes. Exactly that."

"Well, the least I can do is hear you out." Steve said directly, albeit in a cautious tone of voice.

"Why can't everybody be as reasonable as you?" Norris grumbled with a little shake of his head

"Look… Captain… I respect you and what you do more than anyone in this building… but you need to get out of here."

"What do you mean?"

"Your lady is going to come out of that examination room in about five minutes. Ten minutes after that this place will be swarming with government agents specially trained in bringing you in. You have pissed off the administration and they want you in handcuffs. I suggest that as soon as Ms. Rosenthal walked out that door the two of you split. There is nothing you can do for Doctor Pym here. They are already on the way ."

"How do you know this?" Cap said.

"Because I'm the one that they hired to find you, and I did the job I was hired to do." Norris shrugged.

To no surprise, Cap grabbed a handful of his trench coat in one fist and lifted him off the ground.

"I think that you should pick your next words very carefully." Steve growled.

"Jack Monroe." Norris said.

Cap was puzzled, but at least let him put his feet back on the ground.

"Nomad." Cap said quietly.

"He was your friend, Bernie's friend... And my friend." Norris said "We all let him down, but I did most of all."

Cap released the jacket. Nobody seemed to have seen the altercation.

"When he went rogue… when he had been brainwashed… I took steps to make sure that the world thought he was dead. Because of the Super Soldier Serum in his blood he was able to participate in a secret experiment they called 'Winter Soldier.' We froze him with cryogenics, hoping to save his life until things blew over."

Cap knew how this story ended. Jack had been brainwashed again and become the scourge of the underworld. Now he was wandering the nation, a broken man, and no one knew for sure where he was. Once again, a Nomad… but never again a hero."

"They got a hold of him. I don't know how. Hatchaway and I thought that we had hidden him in the deepest, darkest crack… but they still got to him."

"Are you saying that the government had something to do with this? Or Hammer Industries?" Cap demanded.

Norris shook his head "There is no line between the corporations and the government anymore. They get a hold of you… they'll do the same thing that was done to Monroe and Pym. They paid me money, but they can't buy my soul. I'm not going to let that happen."

"Then why did you call them?" Cap fired back.

"I didn't. All I did was stake out this hospital, gambling that either you or somebody you cared about was going to end up here soon. I won the bet, but I am just as certain that they have somebody following me. They are the one who made the call."

Cap breathed hard through his nose. The cloak and dagger world of espionage was one he was familiar with, but it was constantly exasperating.

"Get your lady and get out of here. I'll send them the wrong way. You don't want to make this hospital a war zone. Face these guys at a time and place of your own choosing… with a couple of your friends."

"Who would you suggest?"

Norris pulled out his cell phone and hit the speed dial.

"Just give me a few… Hi! Ms. Van Dyne… thank you for answering your phone… Yes, this is Agent Norris… Thank you for remembering… I've got him right here… Yes he can… I can't keep this channel open, though, so I will just tell him… ok… bye bye." He flipped it shut.

Cap had recognized Jan's voice, or rather her worried screech, on the other end. He couldn't make out the words that were said, though.

"Sorry I couldn't let you two talk, but they have your voiceprint recognition on every telephone… including mine… in the western hemisphere." Norris said "The Wasp lady wants to meet you at her loft in Manhattan. If you are going to accept my council, that is definitely where you two should go."

The scruffy former agent whipped off his trench coat. "It might also help if you covered up the costume. The red boots might get a second glance… but the whole ensemble is just too much."

Cap took the coat and slung his shield across his back before throwing on the coat and belting it around his waist.

"Why are you doing this?"

"You lost someone tonight… I know how that is." Norris said wistfully "Her name was Barb… but that's not important. What is important is that these scum sucking pigs that are coming after you aren't worth your little finger… never have been and never will be."

"I appreciate what you are doing." Cap said graciously "I know it must be dangerous for you…"

Norris waved it away.

"You want to make it up to me? Find the guy who scrambled Pym's brains and kick his sorry ass. I lost a lot of friends when the Helicarrier went down."

Captain America grimly nodded.

"Well, hurry up… you've got a date to keep." Norris said, nodding in the direction of the door down the hall.

Bernie walked out of the door, with a doctor trailing behind murmuring advice to her as she walked out. She didn't look in the mood to follow it. Steve walked to her, and it did not escape his notice that Jack Norris turned on his heel and just as quickly strode in the opposite direction.

"We have to go." Steve told her directly.

"But… I haven't even been discharged…"

"Sir." Cap called to the doctor. "Men will be coming shortly… it is very important that you cooperate with them, but just as important that you convince them that we are still here."

The doctor looked like he didn't understand, but the tone of Captain America's voice compelled him to do whatever he asked.

"Yes… yes… Captain… sir… whatever you say." The doc stammered.

"Let's go." Cap said to Bernie with gentle insistence, his palm softly pressing against her back.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

""To safety." Cap said softly.

* * *

They shared the cab ride in silence. 

The cabbie smelled like cabbage.

Bernie was choosing her words.

Steve was thinking of Mr. Pulaski… and of Sara.

When they got to the address of the Wasp's loft, the Cabbie got out and opened the door. He had easily enough recognized the man for who he was.

Steve stepped out, reaching back to offer his hand to Bernie, but she just looked at it, blinked back tears, and shook her head.

He looked back, his mouth opening and then closing, trying to reach for the words that he knew he was capable of speaking.

She shook her head again, the tears running down her face, and reached out with one hand to drop her ring into his hand.

He clutched it tightly in his fist.

They looked one more time in each others' eyes, and he closed the door behind him.

As the yellow cab took her down the street, he watched it until it disappeared from view.

When he was a little boy, he had lost his grip on a red balloon, and watched it just the same as it sailed into the blue sky. He had watched it until it turned into a red dot and then faded out of existence entirely, becoming a part of the clear blue sky. He slowly looked up, into the unforgiving cold gray of the February sky… reaching back to his memories… back to that boy… back to anything but this.

Then the rain started to fall.

**Next issue: Reckoning**

**_How will it end? Will the mastermind behind the Crimson Cowl be punished? Will Captain America be victorious? Return for the FINAL chapter of Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty, and all will be revealed! Until then, True Believers! _**


	24. Hell is for Heroes

**Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty**

**Final Chapter**

We all believe in our heroes.

If there is a common thread between us all, it is a belief that what is right and correct must always prevail eventually. It is the optimism that struggles against the pessimistic voice inside us that bombards us with evidence of reality in our own lives. In reality, the bad guys win, the good guys lose, and everybody dies in the end. Yet in our hearts there is always hope for a hero, if only one person out of a million, who will buck those long odds. One person who will so tip the scales not only in our favor but in the favor of everyone. The name and face might change, but the hero remains in the back of our mind forever. We may disagree what makes a hero or a villain, but we never consider that heroes or villains exist. We never question that, and we never ask the important question: what does that existence cost them?

Behind his mask, Steve Rogers tried not to dwell on what he had lost. He did his best to push the losses out of his mind. Not only of the losses ancient to us yet so very close to him, but rather of the more recent losses. The loss of the Avengers, of SHIELD, of Sam, Hank, Rachel… Bernie. He released these thoughts as he released the engagement ring from his hand, not even looking back to consider its fate. Instead he tensed his muscles and locked his jaw. Instead he clearly focused on his objective. Instead he pushed ahead and drove on.

That, after all, is what heroes do.

The rain poured on Captain America as he faced an edifice that was hateful for him to look at. It was a tower of steel and glass, a symbol of the power and influence that could be consolidated in the hand of one man. It was as if human greed and avarice had been given a physical form. In this case, the man was the Crimson Cowl. He had learned his true name, but could think of no other identity for him. His mind was a swirl of chaos; of love and loss and pain. He pushed back against those thoughts as the storm drain swallowed the diamond ring. He would need to swallow his feelings just as totally. No matter what those feelings were, this was not a time for anger, rage, hatred of even vengeance. This was a time for justice, if such a thing could be possible given the crimes of the man in the tower. Captain America hefted his shield and walked forward without a backward glance. He had no idea of the implications that this day would have in the years to come... only that the moment had finally come that he had waited for. This was the day of reckoning. He had gone into battle so many times before, as Bucky's partner, as an Invader, and as an Avenger. He knew that this battle he had no choice but to face alone.

He stepped into the shadow cast by the tower.

* * *

One hour ago...

Janet Van Dyne stood in the entryway to Matt Murdock's apartment, looking at the ragged, haggard Super Soldier that limped through the door. She could not remember the last time that she saw Steve looking so beaten. He had a far away look in his eyes like he was in shock and his right hand was inexplicably trembling. She didn't know if he was ready for the shock that she was about to give him, or the burden that she had been carrying for over 24 hours. Matt came in behind him, cracking his neck as she had sometimes seen him do before presenting an argument in front of a jury. She would let him do the talking, but knew that there was one thing that only she could tell Steve. Something that he would only accept from her. Steve opened the overcoat that he had been wearing in order to conceal his costume and nearly collapsed into one of Matt's extremely comfortable easy chairs.

Matt remained standing, unbuttoned his suit coat at the belly, and prepared to make his case.

"Pym was our best suspect, as you see." Matt said to a gesture to the various evidence and notations tacked to his apartment wall. The visual aids had been mostly worthless to him, but Janet had found them essential. "It is now obvious that he was either a pawn, a scapegoat, or both."

Steve could easily see the investigation flowchart take shape on the wall, with several early suspects crossed out. He was impressed that they had ruled out so many so early, with X's through such criminal masterminds as the Wingless Wizard and the Mad Thinker when their whereabouts were ascertained during sightings of the Cowl. Some of the initial suspects surprised him, as both Hank and Tony were in consideration despite their presence at one of the Cowl sightings. As he remembered it, Hank had been out of sight until after the Cowl disappeared and as for Tony... well... it all depended on whether he was actually in the armor or not.

The Wasp nodded when she saw Cap staring at Tony's picture. "I know. It was difficult carrying on the investigation when my partner was a suspect, but he was just acting too strangely about his corporate entanglements and was consorting with some very unsavory characters. He was eventually exonerated, but investigating him did turn up some leads that would be useful later.

Steve's eyes wandered over the many red Xs that were drawn through various suspects, absorbing each but more fascinated by those who the evidence mounted against. At the end he saw the list of suspects whittled down to two finalists... and one of them was Hank. The other one he could not believe. His eyes snapped to Janet Van Dyne in disbelief.

She did her best to fight back the tears...

* * *

The man behind the Crimson Cowl smiled as his finger touched the black queen that sat on his chessboard.

His plans had worked out far better than he could have possibly imagined. Sitting in his cushy leather chair and looking out at the incredible view of Manhattan that his corner office afforded, he could still see trails of smoke from the fires of the SHIELD Helecarrier's ruins. The trail of soot fed itself into clouds twice as dark, and the pouring rain did little to quench the flames. He looked at the report on his desk and could not suppress his glee. If he smiled anymore it might hurt his face. Tomorrow morning it would be announced that his company had won a no-bid contract bid both to build the replacement carrier for the spy agency and to provide paramilitary contractors to train replacements for the agents that had perished. Although the actual amount of the contract would not be announced, it did not truly matter because SHIELD's incalculable budget would provide a bottomless pit of money for his already abhorrently wealthy consortium. In the report on his desk, his analysts projected the stock in his company to increase in value by as much as 25. As a majority stockholder, that would be like being written a check for 18 billion dollars by Uncle Sam.

Not bad for a days work.

His fingers ran over the row of pawns. He had needed so many, but all of them had done their part. He was not at all disappointed in the demise of the Sinister Syndicate, as they were pawns that had outlived their usefulness. He had not earned so much as one penny from their criminal activities, and thus there was no paper trail connecting them. All that he had asked of them was their obedience in return for his protection, which he withdrew once his aims were accomplished. It satisfied him greatly that the Avengers had no part in their downfall, because that was the point. The ruination of the Avengers had been the objective, the ruination of Pym had been a bonus, and as for Captain America…

The first thing he heard was the object clattering on his desk, knowing immediately both what it was and who had thrown it. He heard the man clearing his throat behind him, and the sound of raindrops rolling off of the shield and dripping on his expensive carpet. he had known that he would come, although he did not know the day or the hour, and truthfully this time was as good as any.

"So you've come at last." The man behind the Cowl said.

Captain America said nothing.

"Forgive me, but I always wanted to say that."

Still looking out the window at the trail of dark smoke, the businessman betrayed no emotion, fear or otherwise. Now that he had stepped out of the darkness and into the dim light of his office, he could see his adversary's reflection in the window. Not only had this confrontation been anticipated, but it was necessary.

"Why." Captain America finally said.

The businessman simply chuckled.

"With your reputation for wordy speeches I expected a little more than that."

"Tell me why."

How could the businessman explain it to this flag-draped paladin? A man who had slept though Korea and Vietnam. Even if he wanted to waste his breath, why would he? His understanding was not necessary. Only his destruction.

"I don't quite know what you are talking about, Captain." The man said as he ran his fingers over a white knight.

"You aren't even going to try to deny it." Captain America said, a statement rather than a question. "You unleashed the Syndicate on the city. You tore the Avengers apart and destroyed lives. You killed all those Shield Agents, you killed Rachel, you ruined Hank, and all I want to know is why."

The businessman said nothing.

"WHY DID YOU DO IT KYLE!" Steve Rogers roared, from the very bottom of his tormented heart.

Kyle Richmond swiveled in his chair to face him, and just as soon as their eyes met they both knew one thing… why didn't matter. All that mattered is what would happen next.

* * *

"Nighthawk?" Captain America said with disbelief.

"I couldn't believe it myself." Matt said "But in the end the evidence is incontrovertible. He is the one behind it all. Every trail leads to him.

There was a huge cluster devoted to him. The first of the cluster were pictures of the original Squadron Sinister, with him as a member. This core group made up the crux of the Syndicate, and his connection to it was not as innocuous as it at first seemed. Another pair of pictures showed him battling Captain America and Daredevil, getting the worst of it both times. There was a picture of him with the Defenders, shaking hands with the CEOs of Brand Corp, Hammer Industries, Stane International, Roxxon Oil, and other companies that had been involved in the corporate assault upon Stark Solutions. Next to these was a corporate memo finalizing the incorporation of all these entities under Richmond Avionics as autonomous subsidiaries. There were legal documents including a written grievance against SHIELD for wrongful declaration of death and unlawful confinement. More pictures showed him gripping and grinning with several members of the Commission on Superhuman Activities. Steve nearly didn't hear the explanations that Matt gave for each, so fixated was he on the unfolding truths and his inability to believe them.

"All of this was circumstantial of course… until the attack on the SHIELD headquarters." Matt said, pointing to the remains of the one of the Squadron's jetpacks. "It was manufactured for Richmond, and was in fact the exact same design that he uses in his own costumed identity. Upon inspection of the disc that was removed from Hank's neck… I can tell that it was manufactured on the same equipment. He isn't even trying to hide it."

"I… don't believe it." Steve admitted, despite his belief in the accuracy of Matt's enhanced senses.

"We didn't ether." Matt said "As you see, he was not even considered a serious suspect until the threat that the Commission leveled against you regarding the Defenders."

"It was how we first became suspicious of him… and why I recorded my conversation when I confronted him." Janet said quietly.

"This is our most compelling evidence… but it is… difficult to present." Matt said, holding the tape recorder.

Behind his inscrutable dark glasses, he seemed to be staring at Janet.

"Play it." She said firmly.

As he pushed the button, Matt Murdock nodded respectfully in her direction "Although the two of you cannot hear it, his heartbeat is as clear as can be to me. So are his lies."

_"Why did you do it? Why did you help the government destroy the Avengers?"_

_"What do you mean?"_

_"The government used you for leverage. They said that if we didn't submit to their demands then the Defenders had agreed to take our place."_

_"That's crazy. The Defenders… we couldn't arrange… we'd be late for our own funeral! The only reason the Hulk show up is to raid Doc's fridge! Namor quits every week! What are they talking about?"_

"That was a lie" Matt Murdock said.

_"You mean that you didn't know about it?"_

_"I'm not even the leader, so I can't speak for the whole team. We don't even have a leader. I'm just the money. I can't think of any of us that would have gotten in bed with the government. I don't think that the religious right would stand for us when they found out that the Son of Satan used to be on the team, and they never quite got used to Gargoyle either. Patsy was horrified when she found out what happened after we got back from Dormammu's dimension. Namor wasn't happy about it either. They both think that it would have gone differently if they were there."_

"Heart racing... trying to avoid a lie with quick talk. Mixing in truths without answering the question." Murdock said.

_"You weren't involved in it?"_

_"No. Of course not."_

"Lie." Matt said definitively.

_"I… I'm relieved to hear you say that, Kyle.. Do you love me?"_

_"Of c..."_

The Wasp's finger snapped down on the recorder, silencing the rest of the conversation. Matt Murdock said nothing. But he could hear the hitch in her chest that suppressed a sob, could smell the tears that wanted to fall. The answer to this last question was a secret that they would share... but would never tell.

"If it was any one thing … we could give him the benefit of the doubt." Matt said "Unfortunately, it all adds up. His vengeance against you, me, and SHIELD. Motive and opportunity… so much opportunity. We spent so much time watching our backs that he stabbed us in the gut."

The Wasp finally broke out in tears, and Matt took her in his arms and rested her head on his shoulder. She shook with every wrenching sob, remembering every embrace, every kiss, and seeing only the wreck that was all that remained of Henry Pym laying in her mind.

"I want to kill him." She sobbed into Matt's shoulder, shaking with every word. "I can't face him because I don't know what I will do… I don't know what to do."

Captain America slowly stood up. His disbelief fading in the face of both the Wasp's reaction and hearing the sound of the slick businessman's cavalier response to Janet's very serious question. Only a woman in love could have been swayed by those words, and it didn't take Daredevil's enhanced senses to hear the lie in the voice.

"As I said before, he isn't even trying to hide it." Daredevil said "We only withheld it this long because we can't prove it. He only leaves us enough to know that its him and not enough to prove that its him."

"I believe you… and I know what I have to do." Steve said, pulling on Captain America's mask. He turned on his heel and headed for the door.

"Steve!" Wasp sobbed, pulling away from Matt Murdock.

"Captain… in your condition…." Murdock tried to sound persuasive.

"I'm better off than you… and better off than Sam." Cap said with fury.

"I'm going…" Matt began.

"Let me call the Avengers…" Wasp continued

"No. I have to handle this alone." Cap said "The Avengers cannot be involved… there is too much at stake. You have so much to lose as well."

Remembering the move to disbar him for vigilante activities, Matt understood exactly what Captain America meant.

"I will try to respect your decision… even if I don't agree with it." Daredevil said.

Captain America walked to the door and had his hand on the knob before he felt the Wasp's hand on his shoulder.

"Please… be careful… please…" She sobbed "Please don't hurt him."

Steve turned around with as much gentleness as still remained in him. He put his hand on hers and then removed it.

"I can't promise that."

The door closed in Janet's face, and the sound of it broke her heart.

He had lied about the Avengers, lied about the Defenders, lied about so many things…

Kyle Richmond had not lied when he told her that he loved her.

* * *

Kyle picked up the object that hit his desk, still marked with a few flecks of blood. The control disc was still intact after its removal and had a small corporate logo stamped into it.

"Cord Corporation." Kyle said dropping the control disc back onto the desk "After so many incidents and scandals it was one of my better acquisitions. I bought it cheap."

Standing to look Captain America in the eye, he smiled a smile that didn't reach the rest of his face.

"What exactly are you accusing me of?"

"You are the Crimson Cowl." Cap said bluntly.

"You see... you're wrong, Cap." Nighthawk said "You already know who the Crimson Cowl was."

"You were behind him." Cap fired back.

"Nonsense." Kyle said with a smile.

Cap just stared.

After a moment of silence, Kyle just shrugged in silent surrender. He didn't really want to spoil the moment with pointless denials.

"I might have given him a few suggestions to further my agenda, but I'm no criminal mastermind." Kyle chuckled. "I'm not a genius like Pym. He came up with everything himself. Some of the stuff was so twisted even I couldn't have thought of it. Brand Corp had a secret cloning division, but cloning Hyperion? I never could have come up with that. Assembling the Syndicate, putting the pressure on the Avengers, all that stuff he came up with. Even throwing you the Super Skrull as a patsy to take the heat off himself. I didn't even know what he had planned for Diamondb..."

Captain America hurled himself across the desk, but his shield smashed nothing but Richmond's cushy chair. Kyle cartwheeled out of the way despite his three button suit.

"Now that was just rude." Kyle said, ripping the buttons on his jacket and throwing it at Cap, ruining his attempt to hurl his shield.

"Why?" Captain America growled as he swatted aside the flying jacket.

"What do I look like? Some super villain?" Kyle snapped at he pulled off his tie. "I'm not going to waste my time bragging, explaining, or justifying my actions. You came here for a fight, so lets fight."

Captain America exploded into motion before he even thought about it, hurling his shield with deadly force, but Nighthawk hit the deck in time for the disc to sail over his head. Cap was flying over the desk just as Kyle sprung back to his feet and leveled a kick at him. Cap blocked the kick by raising his knee and taking the brunt of it on the hard leather of his boot. Kyle threw a punch but he swatted it aside just as easily. He did not realize it was a feint until Kyle erupted into a back handspring and he found his own shield barreling back to him on the ricochet. He caught it just it time, but one more split second and would have knocked him out.

_Careless, Rogers_. Cap recriminated himself.

"You chose the wrong time to pick this fight." Kyle said in a deceptively calm voice as he landed on his feet. "In case you didn't look outside, its nighttime. I'm stronger than you, faster than you, younger than you… better than you."

"Prove it." Cap said simply.

"I intend to."

Cap charged him shield-first, intending to launch his true attack in the direction that the Dark Defender retreated to, but Richmond surprised him by standing his ground and catching hold of the disc like a steering wheel. He was surprised at the steely grip, and how he pulled him along with the momentum of the charge, reversing positions with a judo-like sidestep.

"You want to know what I hate about you, Cap?" Kyle said, gripping the shield in a death grip as a tug of war was fought over the shield "It isn't the stupid little pirate boots you wear… the self righteous prattle you are always spewing… or the way all the women faint for you… IT'S THIS DAMN SHIELD!"

Nighthawk pulled so hard that he yanked Cap right off his feet and planted him flat on his back, still tugging with all of his might.

"I never understood… why anybody… would try to bruise their knuckles…. On this thing." Kyle said through gritted teeth at they played tug of war with the shield. "It might be… unbreakable… "

Cap gasped in pain and surprise as the straps across his palm and forearm snapped under the force of Nighthawk's savage yank. He didn't even have time to process what happened before he was smashed over the head with his own shield.

"Too bad the straps aren't." Kyle said to the stunned Living Legend, hurling the shield through the window of his office with a resounding crash.

Cap looked up at the smug face of Kyle Richmond and saw something that he hadn't seen before: A look of almost pure aggression that could not be imagined.

"I always wanted to do that."

Two things become obvious to Steve in that moment. The first was how seriously he had underestimated his opponent, and how much his miscalculation might cost him. The second was that the strain of so many brutal combats over the last two days was finally catching up with him.

His sweep kick failed to take Kyle off of his feet, but it did give him the split second he needed to jump back to his. His adversary wasted no time in pressing the advantage that moment gave him.

Cap blocked the fist blow, countered the second, but then Kyle planted his foot firmly in the middle of his chest and shoved him back nearly twenty yards with one solid kick. The only thing that stopped his backward sprawl was a sofa that he crashed into.

"You want to know my plan?" Richmond yelled after him, the breeze from the broken window tossing his hair and rippling his silk shirt. "It was simple. Separate you from the government, separate you from the Avengers, separate you from your shield, and separate you from your life. Everything else you can thank Pym for. The disc didn't make him a puppet… only a willing accomplice."

Cap sprung to his feet with a snarl and hurled the entire couch at Nighthawk, who caught it despite his surprise.

"Honestly, who throws a cou…" He said before cap leveled both him and the couch with a flying drop kick that smashed the wooden frame of the expensive sofa to smithereens.

Richmond struggled to his feet and ripped the upholstery of the sofa in half with an effortless tug, but only did so in time to catch a resounding right hook and left jab from Captain America. He fell back on his ass, but somersaulted back to his feet. He staggered back against his desk and wiped the blood from his bottom lip with the sleeve of his silk shirt.

"First blood to you, Captain." Nighthawk laughed, as if this was a fencing match.

The combatants circled each other, neither one granting the other an inch or an opening.

"I've waited a long time for this." Nighthawk said, favoring the Super Soldier with an intense stare. "Ever since that first time we fought, you know. I never got over that embarrassment. Many years later I made myself a promise… that you would know what it was like to lose."

Steve held his battle stance, realizing that blood was a dripping from his palm and forearm where the straps of his shield had bitten into him. Along with all the other aches, pains, and injuries, he could give them no mind.

"It took many years and about a million dollars in personal training until I felt ready. Training by military commandos, martial arts experts, Taskmaster, and this French guy named Epurier… all of them during the day so that at night my abilities would increase exponentially. Each one gave me a piece of the puzzle that I needed to kick your ass…"

"How is that working out for you?" Cap quipped.

"Perfectly." Kyle said with a sinister flatness.

Cap made the first move, coming in with a kick from Tai Kwon Do. Kyle blocked it with a Kung Fu forearm sweep. Kyle countered with a finger dart toward his eyes, and when he blocked that it became a forearm grapple from Jujitsu which Cap countered with a Judo roll that became a Savate kick, a Karate Chop and a kickboxing elbow all in one smooth motion. Nighthawk absorbed each blow and responded with a sweep kick that connected solidly, blocking Cap's counter-kick with a pair of crossed forearms. From there the combat became a flurry that was too fast for an observer's eyes to see. Kicks, punches, chops, blocks, jabs, knees, elbows, and spear-handed strikes flew between the two men like a swarm of bees. Finally, one block was missed, one punch landed solidly across his jaw, and Cap collapsed to the plush carpet like a sack of wet cement. He struggled to gat back to his feet, but the room was spinning and he was spitting blood. It was Kyle Richmond who pulled him to his feet, knocking him back to the ground with another punch. It hit him like a Jackhammer.

He hit him with another… and another… and another…

Then he caught the fist, and began to squeeze, he forced himself to his feet, bleeding and groggy but unwilling to fall down.

"I like a man… with a firm grip… shows character." Nighthawk said through gritted teeth, then leveled a punch at Cap with his other fist.

Purely on instinct, Cap swatted the punch aside with an Aikido forearm block, pulled the fist he held behind his own back, and smashed his palm directly into Richmond's nose. Contrary to how it was often portrayed in movies and fiction, such a strike was not infallibly lethal. It did, however, almost always end a fight. As soon as the blow landed Kyle Richmond was instantly blinded with a perfect storm of pain, shock, and his own blood. As soon as Cap released his hold he pitched forward, blinded with blood rushing from his tear ducts, choking on the blood gushing down his throat, and shorting out a crimson gush that trailed from his shattered nose to the carpet.

The two men were only about a foot apart, on all fours, both bleeding on the expensive carpet. There was no doubt in either of their minds that the fight was over. All that was left to be decided was who would pass out first.

1945

"Are you sure about this?" General Phillips asked.

"No." Steve said. "Not at all."

"Then why did you volunteer?"

"I don't know." Steve admitted.

They stood together in front of the chamber with cold tendrils of mist curling out of it. Neither one could imagine what they were seeing as anything other than science fiction. It was a machine meant to freeze a man. Their spies insisted that the Russians had already successfully tested their prototype, but as far as they were concerned it had never been attempted on anyone. As it have been in many other things, Steve Rogers would be the first.

"Have they got someone new?" Cap asked.

"His name is Jeff Mace. The first one… didn't work out. He was killed defending an injured sailor… some kid named Kennedy. The weird robot said he was from the future. I guess the higher ups want you to be given the chance to find out."

"Adam Two… that's nuts."

"You get a chance to find that creep when you wake up… give him a punch for the Spirit of 76."

"I'll do my best."

"I know you will."

"Let's sit down for a moment, son. The eggheads aren't ready yet."

Steve and the General sat down as the older man lit his pipe.

"I can't believe that it has come to this." The General said between puffs of smoke.

"This is how it has to be." Steve said "I tried. I really did, but those Nazi scientists I caught in Argentina… the government just put them on the payroll."

"It's a new war, but you can still fight it." Phillips insisted.

"Fight a war… for how long?" Steve said in a tired voice "Against the Russians now? Four more years… or forty… or a hundred?"

"Nope. Even you would have to die sometime, Sonny."

Steve looked toward the chamber "Maybe not."

General Phillips shook his head "Sometimes… I look at you and can't help seeing the skinny kid in the enlistment office. Other times… I can't even recognize you at all. But of all the soldiers I've trained, all the soldiers I've seen, there has never been one that I've ever been so proud of. If anyone deserves his rest… you are that man."

Steve ran his hand though his hair, smiling in embarrassment, and then frowned very deeply.

"Everything is gone for me, sir." Steve said softly. "My family is gone, along with Sara, Peggy, Bucky, even Captain America."

"Well… when you reach a certain point life stops giving and starts taking away. That is why they say Hell is for Heroes, son. I don't really think its that, though. It's the bomb."

"Yes."

"I know that I've asked it before, but why not just play ball? What happened to the kid who wanted to kill every slant eyed yellow bastard on the planet?"

"I got the chance to." Steve said sadly "They fought bravely, and they deserve better."

"Nobody in this war has gotten what they deserve, so why should they be any different?" Phillips asked.

"That isn't my decision to make. No matter what the man in the briefing said, I don't think I'm a god. I only want to do what I believe is right, and after taking so many lives and seeing so many others destroyed I believe most strongly in the sanctity of life. I never want to take one ever again."

Garrison only nodded. He did not agree, but could surely understand.

"I never thought it would end like this… but then again I never did think how it would end. After all, I'm not really human am I? I'm just another weapon to them."

"You will always be more. More than they deserved."

Steve stood up when he saw the technician gesturing to him from inside a foil suit that was supposed to protect him from the cold. He nodded toward where General Garrison was waiting behind a glass shield and walked toward the awaiting chamber. No more needed to be said, because neither man believed in goodbyes.

"Why are you really doing this, soldier?" General Phillips asked sadly.

Steve Rogers turned around, making sure that his military fatigues were buttoned to the very top.

"This might be the finest service I ever do for my country." He said without a hint of regret, and turned to meet his destiny.

If only destiny were not so cold…

* * *

He heard a snap noise, and it felt like his head exploded as his entire body jerked.

"Wake up, old timer!" He heard Kyle laugh in a nasal voice as he saw him holding a broken capsule of smelling salt. It was only a moment after he snapped back to awareness before he realized that he could barely move. Kyle had thrown a heavy meeting table on top of him and was sitting on top of it, crushing down on him.

He didn't know how long he had been out, but it couldn't have been long, because Richmond was still having difficulty breathing. He had taken off his silk dress shirt and was using it to stanch the flow of blood from his broken nose. He threw the shirt aside with the nitrate caplet, sniffling a bit before spitting a wad of clotted blood on his expensive carpet. He looked down at him wearing only a sleeveless cotton undershirt. He had one eye that was squinting slightly with a sudden swell, whites of his eyes totally red from the broken blood vessels, and Steve couldn't imagine that he looked any better.

"Let me tell you a story, Steve…. You don't mind if I call you Steve?" Kyle asked rhetorically as he peeled off the blue mask with the big A. He tossed it aside as if it didn't matter at all. Steve tried to struggle but both arms were pinned under the table.

"Once upon a time, there was a boy. A very lonely boy. He looked up to his father, but was a little afraid of him too. One day the little boy grew up into a man, and fell in love. One day he was so very much in love that he wasn't paying attention. He made a mistake that he would regret forever, and he was… so very consumed with the regret that he did the only thing he could imagine would make up for it. He tried to join the Army. But… wouldn't you know it? He failed the physical. Imagine that. He wasn't even worth the chance to die for his country in a horrible place for stupid reasons. Any of this sound familiar STEVE?" Nighthawk snapped as he grabbed Steve's skull in both hands.

The two men locked eyes.

"So one day an old man showed up and told the boy he had the answer to all his problems brewing in a test tube, and all he had to do was let himself be a test subject. So the boy did the only thing that he thought he could do and drank the Kool-aid. After all, what did he have to lose? So he took the super powers, took the silly costume, and ran with it. But you know what happened next?"

Steve only sneered in pain, but his vision blurred for a moment, seeing his enemy as he was: Powder blue tights, an ugly brown cape, and a ridiculous beak for a nose.

"You kicked my ass, that's what happened!" Kyle yelled , releasing Steve's skull and letting it thud back to the carpet.

"What's your point?" Steve croaked, slowly working both arms ever closer to freedom.

"Every day has a night, Steve." Nighthawk said "Every knight in shining armor has a black knight waiting in the darkness. You and I… we are so alike its scary. The only problem is… you are the past and I am the future. You try to represent the American Dream without knowing what it is."

_Just keep talking._ Steve thought with a grimace as he continued his struggle of inches.

"The American Dream isn't the pursuit of happiness… it is the pursuit of more. More and more of everything. You see the best in all of them, but I see them for what they really are. I know what they want, and I know what they need. They want their cheap gas, their fast food, their instant gratification. They want their drugs, their perverse sexual orientations, their easily dissolved marriages and their quickie abortions. They want to pay poor immigrants nickels to do jobs they used to do for dollars and then complain about it. You think that the people of their country need a dream? That they need to be fed more bullshit while the world crumbles around them? Oh, no, Steve… they need a cold hard slap of reality."

Steve worked his arms up to shoulder level, finally feeling some leverage.

"John Adams was right about them all along and Jefferson was wrong. Men cannot be elevated or enlightened… only ruled. The administration that you turned your back on was doing that. Don't get me wrong… I love this country so much that I want to give everyone who doesn't a good old fashioned stomping. The difference between you and me is that I have the power and the will to do what is necessary: Build a world where two-bit thugs will piss in their sissy robes and cry in their turbans just for thinking about attacking us. Build a world where not a single man or woman will ever have to live under a government built on irrational, medieval superstition. Machiavelli said that it is safer to be feared than loved, and I intend to make the United States the safest damn nation on the planet."

"What the hell… happened to you… Kyle." Steve struggled.

"I died, Steve." Kyle said "Not here… not really… but I died."

Steve had almost worked his elbows close enough to his body to do what he had in mind.

"When the Secret Empire's base blew up, my mind was blown out of my body. I don't know how it happened, but I found myself in another universe… in another Kyle Richmond, and saw the man that I could have been. We were two men in the same body, and he eventually regained control of it, but I was still aware of everything that he did… just unable to effect any action. He thought I was gone, but I was a prisoner in his body while mine was in a coma. You met him, you know, and I was there. I experienced his life, and his death, and I cannot explain how… moving it was. You don't know the half of how brave he was… how brilliant… he never compromised what he believed was right. He gave his life to redeem the world, and he redeemed me. When he died and I returned to my own body… I was reborn. Ha. You know what they joke was? Nobody even missed me. Nobody visited my invisible grave, nobody went looking for where SHIELD hid me… I saved the Multiverse once, you know. Not the world, the solar system, the galaxy, or even the universe… the whole damn MULTIVERSE. I didn't even get a decent burial, much less a statue like you. I realized that I never was going to change the world by punching out pimps and pickpockets. I had to think bigger."

_Almost. There._

"Archimedes said give me enough leverage and I can move the world…" Kyle began, but he never got the chance to finish.

With a mighty heave, Captain America hurled both the heavy table and Kyle Richmond five feet in the air, snapped his legs underneath the table, and kicked upward with all his might. Richmond was sandwiched between the table and the ceiling, and Steve somersaulted out of the way as the entire mess poured down. Rolling backward, he snapped to his feet just in time to watch Richmond crawl out of the rubble.

"Stay down." Captain America cautioned him "I never hit a man when he's down."

Richmond laughed, cradling his lower back and baring his bloody teeth.

"Why would I do that? What are you doing to do? Arrest me? That's rich. Breaking and entering… assault… destruction of property… if I wasn't having so much fun I might threaten to sue you!"

Kyle fought his way to his feet, but a roundhouse right knocked him back down. He only laughed more, spitting up blood as he did.

"You remember… the first time we met?" Kyle gasped from his prone position.

"It looked a lot like this." Cap said grimly.

"Well… not exactly." Kyle said, nodding to the chessboard next to his desk. "You remember the Grandmaster's chessboard?"

"How could I forget."

"Well… you beat me then, but this time you have been playing checkers while I've been playing chess." Kyle said as he fought his way to his feet again, with a swift kick to the sternum flattening him once again. The large office was filled with the sound of his shattering ribs. He coughed, gagged, and spit blood.

"Stay down." Cap warned again, not expecting him to listen.

Kyle laughed and gagged at the same time, barely catching the breath to speak.

"Do you know how to win at chess?" Kyle asked rhetorically.

Steve ignored him.

"It is really very simple." Kyle said "You sacrifice your pawns, you sacrifice everything to keep your king standing. You give your opponent a series of no-win situations and you let them choose which way they want to lose. I did that with you, and you did exactly that."

Once again he tottered to one knee.

"You chose to be a dream when America needed a reality, you decided to play a hero when your nation needed a soldier. You failed, in every possible way, and now maybe you finally know what it is like to lose. The Avengers are property of the government, and will do what they are told by the politicians that I own or they will be shut down. SHIELD will be dependant on me to even function, and if they don't accept my help it will take them years to rebuild. Everything you had is mine now."

"Not everything."

"Oh no?" Kyle laughed, once again achieving his feet "Maybe we'll know that for sure when Bernie accepts my job offer."

It was like a moment in slow motion. Steve was moving before his mind could register it, the power of his anger flowing from his heart to his shoulder, through his arm as it sailed through the air, pushed with his entire body from the bottom of his heel through his spine and finally into the fist that smashed into Kyle Richmond's face. His eyes widened as he saw Richmond knocked right off of his feet, suspended four feet off of the ground for a moment, clearing all the rubble behind him to hit the carpet with a dull thud… rolling several feet after that. His fist trembled with the impact, and he could not remember ever having hit anyone that hard.

He was trembling with rage, with disappointment, and with disbelief at his loss of control.

"Damn you." Cap said, climbing over the rubble as Kyle groaned and rolled over. He clutched a handful of his shirt and pulled him up to face him. "Damn you to hell for what you've done."

"Remember…" Kyle said with a bloody smile "Hell isn't just for the unrighteous… but also for the self-righteous."

Steve realized that he had one hand around Kyle's throat, and the urge to tighten his grip was burning within him. Instead, he slapped him into a headlock and began to drag him. He pulled him to his feet and dragged him toward the shattered window, pulling him right out of his shoes. Kyle tried to fight with his hands but Cap was cutting off both the flow of blood and oxygen to his brain. He pulled him to the hole in the window and dangled him out of it. He stopped himself just in time, as if finally realizing what he was doing.

_I believe most strongly in the sanctity of life._

"Go ahead." Kyle said "Do it. it's the only way that you are going to win. You have no evidence that I did anything. Whatever justice you think you are going to bring me to will be on my side. Kill me and at least you can say that I was punished for my crimes. After all, what do Avengers do?"

_I never want to take one ever again._

"They Avenge." Kyle finished.

It took all of his control not to break Richmond's neck and let him fall.

"You won't do it. Even when you have me in check, you can't do what you must to win. Because you care to much about what you think you stand for. Do it… DO IT!"

Cap drew back his fist and punched him savagely, but rather than let him fall he heaved him up over his head and threw him into the center of the room. They both knew that he couldn't do it. One step after the other, he stalked toward him, finally falling to his knees next to his fallen form.

"You were a hero." Cap said simply, with more regret than can be imagined by anyone that didn't hear them "You were… a hero."

"Haven't you read the classics?" Kyle wheezed "Gilgamish... Achilles... Beowulf... Lancelot... all heroes fall. Are we really so much better?"

That was the moment the door burst in.

"Freeze!" Steve heard the shouts before he saw twelve soldiers with M9 pistols drawn storm into the room. Normally he would already be on his feet and moving, but he was so shaken that he could barely register the threat before there was nothing he could do about it. They were all pointing their weapon at him and he did not have his shield. He could only regard them with a look of surprise as he examined them. They were white,black, hispanic, asian, male and female. The only thing each seemed to have in common was the uniform that they wore.

"Give it up, Rogers." A hatefully familiar voice said in an amused tone a similarly hateful form walked into the room.

"Gyrich."

"That's right, Rogers. I've got you dead to rights this time. These fine soldiers are from the local National Guard unit in Watertown, New York. Take is away, Captain."

A female Captain in dress uniform walked up from behind Gyrich and took a position to the front and center of the formation of troops. She pulled open a folded piece of paper and read it coldly.

"Rogers, Steven… Captain, United States Army… you are under arrest for violations of the uniform code of military justice in regards to public statements unbecoming a military officer, failure to report for duty, and missing movement." The stopped reading and then added "I'm sorry, Sir. You need to come peacefully."

"I appreciate your service, Captain, but I'm not a soldier anymore."

"That's where you are wrong, Rogers." Gyrich Snarled. "The President of the United States reserves the right to recall any able bodied commissioned officer to Active Duty in the event of a national emergency. If you would have remembered to forward your mail from the mansion perhaps you would have gotten the notice... effective the day before you made the statement in question. Ignorance if no excuse, and if you refuse to submit to military justice I am sure an arrest for impersonating a military officer will do. You have been claiming your rank for more than sixty years. One way or another, you're coming with me."

Steve tried to get to his feet, but the sound of twelve safety selector switches snapping off discouraged him from doing so. He looked at the soldiers in their weaver stances, and could tell that all of them were very intimidated. That would not stop them from doing their job. Every instinct said attack, and his muscles tensed in anticipation of it.

"Go ahead." Richmond whispered. "You beat my ass... you sure as hell could take these weekend warriors."

Then he smiled.

"The thing about it is... in your condition... without your shield... how many of them could you take down without killing them?"

Steve glared at his fallen adversary.

"This is the fundamental question, Steve... who are you? Who do you want to be?"

Steve looked at the waiting soldiers, seeing them sweating, trembling, but no more resolute for it. His entire life flashed before his eyes. A life of refusal to quit, refusal to surrender. In his mind's eye his fist flew and drew blood from the face of a Japanese Colonel, broke the rifle of a German infantryman, and smashed the mask of the Red Skull himself. His fist broke through ice and smashed Baron Zemo, the Masters of Evil, Hydra, and AIM. As he looked at his fist in reality, he knew what it would do to these soldiers that were standing in front of him. Realizing this, his fist unclenched.

_"Who are you?"_

He glanced at Gyrich.

_"Who do you want to be?"_

He glanced at the soldiers.

"You're wrong, Kyle... and you are wrong about America." Was all that Steve said before the unthinkable happened.

He slowly raised his hands to the sky.

"I surrender." Captain America said. "I'll go along peacefully. You have my word on that."

The female officer carefully walked forward and unhooked a pair of handcuff from her belt.

"I'm sorry that these are necessary." She said "Please place your hands behind your head."

She clasped on the handcuffs with deceptive gentleness.

"Please take your feet and step back from Mr. Richmond." She said, and he complied. "My name is Captain Garrison, and I am your escort. I will be with you through the entire process Sir."

The soldiers holstered their weapons and six of them moved to flank Captain America like praetorian guardsmen. The others moved to secure the doorway and window while Gyrich helped Kyle Richmond to his feet. Together they walked Steve to the doorway.

The sound of soft chuckling filled the room as the man known as Nighthawk stood once again. Steve brought his walk to a stop and slowly turned around.

"This isn't over... Nighthawk." Cap promised.

"I told you already... Nighthawk is dead. He was a man I was never meant to be." He said as he pushed a button on his watch.

A compartment in his office wall slid open and revealed its contents: A very intimidating set of black articulated body armor with a golden-winged helmet that totally covered the head, with both the eyes and mouth of the helmet being a foreboding black void. On the back were a pair of huge red wings and on the chest was the familiar golden symbol of the hawk with flared wings.

"Call me Warhawk."

Cap slowly turned away. "It's not over."

"You did a good job here." Gyrich said to Richmond as he offered him a handkerchief "You served your country and the cause of justice. I know that it couldn't have been easy."

Kyle took the offered handkerchief and wiped the blood from his face in a silent statement.

"You are a true hero. I'll talk to the President and make certain that there is a Presidential Metal of Freedom in it for you."

"I was only doing my job." Kyle said with a bizarre degree of humility.

"That is what all the heroes say, Richmond." Gyrich said as he followed the last of the soldiers out of the office.

As the soldiers escorted Captain America out of the building Kyle Richmond was left alone in the darkness, enjoying the breeze from his broken window and regarding the destruction that was his perfect office an hour ago. He preferred it like this. He picked up a broken picture that had fallen off his desk. It was him with Janet at the beach, her beautiful smile for the photograph but her beautiful eyes only for him. Looking to his armor, cloaked in shadow, he dropped the cracked frame back to the blood-splattered carpet. He walked over to the chessboard, and saw that only two pieces still standing on it... the black knight and the white king. With one finger, he knocked the piece over on its side.

"Checkmate." Kyle Richmond said with quiet satisfaction.

The End.


	25. Epilogue

Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty

Epilogue

The soldier began the day like he did every day.

It was four in the morning, and wake up was at five. The habits of a lifetime, however, were hard to break. He spent the time doing hundreds of pushups, sit ups, and other calisthenics that were designed to maintain his fighting edge. It was a time of the day that he felt truly free, not needing to dwell on the past or the future, but to live in the now. The first hints of false dawn battled with the moonlight to provide enough illumination for him, but in truth he could have done this routine in the dark. It had been three months, and he had done this routine every morning. No matter now many months were ahead, he knew the routine would be waiting for him. When he finished the exercise, he looked out through the bars on his windows to see a fair view of the moonlit Kansas plains. Inside this small room was his world, but outside that window was Fort Leavenworth Kansas. It was equal parts army base and prison, just as he was equal parts soldier and prisoner.

The trial had not been a typical example of military justice: which was swift and efficient at the expense of being fair and just. The military was an institution that had embraced the reality that life was unfair and that its legal system should reflect reality. In this instance, that maxim had never been more true. The appointed Judge Advocate on his case was a disinterested holdover who was just waiting to finish the case so that he could resign his commission and pursue a career in the private sector. He insisted that was where the real money was. He made little effort to challenge the central point of the case - that Steve's recall to active duty had been not only unlawful but outrageous - yet busied himself with challenging minutia in the unsigned contract in an effort to apparently alienate the General who oversaw the proceedings and insure a more swift conviction. Under different circumstances, Steve would have been angry with the incompetent lawyer, but at the point in the proceedings when he was slapped with an official censure and an enforced continuance (so that he could actually build a case) he only felt pity for him.

The prosecutor, in contrast, seemed much more concerned about Steve's welfare, but expressed it to the point that it became embarrassing. After the first day in court, for example, he complained that no awards and decorations were displayed on the basic dress uniform that he had been provided for the proceedings. This had resulted in a tedious break in the proceedings where a team of researchers had needed to exhume his war record in order to determine what, if any, such awards he was entitled to. Some awards stressed credulity, as he had been wounded 21 times in the second world war and was therefore entitled to 21 purple hearts. With oak leaf clusters, this could be displayed, but there was a dispute regarding how many V devices for Valor to display. The resulting block of ribbons that they pinned to his chest kept him from being able to move his right arm freely and nearly broke in half when he saluted. He was as embarrassed by the ostentatious volume of his decorations as he was by the bureaucracy that had created them. The lawyer also argued that the Captain's rank was incorrect and that he would have fully qualified for both Major and Lieutenant Colonel based on both time in service and time in grade considerations. This digression only enraged the Judge further.

The resulting circus dragged on for months and became the most infamous military trial of all time, resulting in the eventual firing of the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Army, and the Chief of Staff of the Army. The trial became a nightly point of contention on the cable news shows, with strange divisions that cracked Conservative/Liberal polarity into four camps all with different reasons for siding with either Cap or the Army. The foreign press was both baffled and terrified, but they could not look away from the resulting car crash. "Free the Captain" T-shirts in Germany became a cultural phenomenon in France and Germany, displaying Steve's face in a Che Guevara-like visage looking up to some unknown horizon. Sales estimates eclipsed 40 million euros. For a brief moment, it seemed as if a settlement was to be reached allowing the Steve to return to active duty in a limited role, but it required an only an admission of guilt for failure to report and no mention of the offense for which he had been arrested. The Administration sent a hatchet man to make certain that the Judge was made aware of what would happen to his star if he allowed that to transpire.

In the end, both the defender and prosecutor were disappointed by the news that Captain America had been convinced on all counts. The sentence was obscene: life without possibility of parole. The announcement had caused a riot in Washington DC that caused flames that could be seen on the horizon in Maryland. It had only been controlled, ironically, when the Avengers had been called in to control the chaos. Of all the people to display such outrage, there was one who conspicuously did not show it: Captain America himself. He was as good as his word, and accepted the judgment that had been passed down on him. In the statement he gave after the trial he let the nation know that he was proud to live in a country where he and those like him were not above the law. He said that it was of absolute importance to understand that the law was the leader and that the leader was not the law. He left it up to the people to decide if that was actually true. The Prosecutor committed suicide that night after finding out that his wife had taken his children and left him. The Defender had discovered that he had been blackballed by every private law firm in the United States and received only laugher on the line when he called the Public Defenders office. He eventually found a job as a notary public who catered to a slow trickle of business through a seedy little office in Queens.

As a commissioned officer, the only prison where confinement was permitted was this little fort in the Kansas plains. Life was difficult, there was no doubt, but he was accustomed to the strict military discipline that was expected of the prisoners. Both the guards and the prisoners treated him with an uncommon degree of deference. A few even expressed their admiration when a private moment presented itself. He had adjusted to this life quickly, becoming an inspiration to the other prisoners when assigned to a hard labor detail. Even the commanding general of the fort had lauded him both as a model prisoner and a positive influence in the lives of the men who were confined there. Many realized very quickly that not only had his conviction not changed who he was, but that his confinement never would.

He was looking in the mirror at the end of the workout session, quietly splashing a little bit of water on his face, when he heard the laughter.

"Oh, how the mighty have fallen." The all too familiar voice gloated.

Captain America turned to see what was perhaps the last thing he ever expected. On the other side of his bars, half cloaked in darkness, was a chuckling figure in three different tones of purple. Through the bars his metallic blue face leered in an expression of amusement and triumph.

Kang the Conqueror.

"How very far you had to fall." the time traveler said before clucking his tongue.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Steve growled.

"Now how's that for gratitude?" Kang admonished him "Do you know how much difficulty I went to in order to make certain that I was here at just this moment? Do you know how many things needed to happen in order for this moment to happen?"

Cap slowly approached the bars.

"Every man thinks that they are the master of their own destiny." Kang chuckled "But they don't realize that they are just like a straw in the river that is time, swept along by currents beyond their control. The one who put you here, Richmond, is no different. His namesake in another world battled a man not unlike me, and perhaps were he paying attention he might have learned a thing or two in that other world. It was all to easy to manipulate him. Too easy to harden his heart through manipulation of events. It pleased me to bring about your downfall through him, because you have no idea what will come next. I do, though. The best thing about being from the future is always being a step ahead."

"So you are here to gloat?" Steve said, inching ever closer.

"Gloat?" Kang said, clasping his palm to his chest melodramatically. "Oh, perish the thought. I am simply here to offer you aid in your darkest hour."

Steve's eyes narrowed.

"You don't believe me?" Kang laughed "Don't you know who I am? I have helped you before, as Rama-Tut and as Immortus. When it has pleased me to do so I have done you many favors. Your reaction to me has ever been vastly dependant upon what clothes I choose to wear."

Steve inched closer and his adversary did not seem to notice.

"You don't know the power that sits in the palm of my hand." Kang said as that very palm began to glow.

Steve saw within that glow images that were forever burned into his head, and Kangs words to go with them.

"Would you like to see your mother and father again? I can save them, you know. One word to your mother that you were alive would be all it would take. Your father's disease would be alleviated with the most primitive treatments of my time. If I can do that for him… why not for Sara? Bucky? Just say the word and he never reaches that plane. Perhaps you would like for your beloved Rachel pulled from the jaws of certain death by a last moment miracle. Easily arranged. All the altruistic outcomes that you could ever want are easily achievable. Second chances are a dime a dozen to one such as I. You can live the life you want, have the love you need, never even have to be Captain America. I can do anything that you can imagine, endless possibilities..."

His hand snapped into a fist, killing the light of the idyllic images

"All you have to do… is beg." Kang finished through his sadistic smile.

An iron grip clamped on his wrist and pulled his arm though the cage, yanking the conqueror's arm until his metal mask clanked against the bars.

"Go to hell, Kang." Steve snarled.

The sound of breaking bone echoed throughout the prison, followed by a blood curdling scream.

"Didn't see that coming, did you?" Steve growled as he released the arm and let him fall to the cement floor.

"Arrrggggggghhhhh!" Kang howled, scrambling to get on his feet. All down the corridor murmurs filled the hallway as awakening prisoners ran to their bars to see what the disturbance was.

The time traveling despot cradled one arm to his side and held up another that was crackling with blue lighting.

"You will pay for that, primitive, you will…"

He saw Captain America standing tall and proud even in his prison uniform, staring directly at him with blue eyes that held not the slightest hint of fear.

The blue lighting slowly faded from his gauntlet.

"No." Kang said with a pained cackle "Oh no. That's what you want, and I won't give it to you. This is not the end for you. You will have years to suffer, years to regret, and when you finally succumb I shall be there. Oh yes. I will be there Captain, and you will beg. Oh… beg and plead beg and PLEAD!"

"Don't count on it, Kang." Steve said.

"You will… oh yes… you will…" Kang laughed as he began to fade away "You will beg… and I will refuse."

At the end there was nothing visible but Kang's disembodied mouth like the Cheshire Cat.

"Time is on my side… yes it is…"

The prison guards ran to the bars, seeing nothing where something was only moments before, and looked at Steve with a look of total bafflement.

"It was nothing, boys." Cap assured them "Just a sad little man who can't help but live in the past because he can't face the future."

As the guards turned to leave, whispering to each other, Steve turned and looked in the mirror. Life had not turned out the way that he expected it to, but he would curse neither God or fate for that. He had made his decisions and been true to himself. No man on earth could do any more than that. Looking in the mirror, he knew who he was. He was not defined by any costume or uniform. He was not defined as an Invader or a Avenger, a costumed hero or a crime fighter. He was Captain Steven Rogers. He was a soldier. His nation had turned its back on him more than once, but he loved it and would serve it still. He had not accepted defeat, and would never quit. No matter what situation he found himself in he would serve as an example and an inspiration. He was only a man, but also a symbol of liberty, and would forever be its sentinel… ever watchful. The powerful believed that they had imprisoned him, but they could not imprison liberty.

Finis

**Afterword:**

Thank you all for reading Captain America, Sentinel of Liberty. There is a legion of you that I must thank who supported me through the long and tough writing process that resulted in this story. This story belongs as much to all of you as it does to me. This was an important story for me to write and I have been blown away by the response to it. It is the first Fanfiction I have written and I am so glad that many people have said that they have enjoyed it. I have refrained from using too many authors notes throughout so that I could just stick them all in here at the end where people could chose to either read them or not. I will start out by saying that this was a hard story to write. Captain America as a character might be one of the hardest characters to write in comic books for the simple reason that you have to be very careful with what he does and says. He represents the country, not just a certain segment of it or a certain ideology. At the same time he is still a man rooted in a particular time and place that has ingrained beliefs that cannot be denied or just whitewashed over. If any of the beliefs that Cap espoused offended anybody than I am terribly sorry. As I was writing him I could not help trying to get into his head. He is a white Anglo-Saxon male protestant from New York City that came of age in the great depression. He has a heavy military background and fought in the second world war. These, I thought, were very formative experiences that would have a gigantic impact on who he was. At the same time I cannot deny that some of my own complex feelings about my country and the current situation of the nation were expressed in this work, and again if any of this offended anyone I am sorry. I am an American Soldier who is currently fighting what many believe to be a global war on terrorism (as terrifying as that sounds). I will not deny that the only thing that I truly know is that there IS a war and I AM fighting it. Like the Captain I am a prisoner of my own time, place, and upbringing. I tend to believe that history is the one that gets to decide what a war is about, and history is written by the victors. How many children growing up today believe that the American civil war was about civil rights, or freeing the slaves, instead of about economic disagreements? Upon reflection, money truly is the root of all evil.

In my search for Steve Rogers I had to take a lot of things into consideration. He is a character with a history that has been chronicled by hundreds of writers over the course of more than 65 years. Yet there are only a handful of writers who bothered to look very far beneath the surface. It is almost like people have been afraid of what they would find there. Many writers have been very timid writing Cap, not wanting to get any dirt on him. The few exceptions to the rule have been exceptional ones. Roger Stern, Mark Gruenwald, and J.M. Dematteis come to mind as the ones that were most interested in who this guy was as opposed to just what he could do. Bob Harris and Roy Thomas (for all their other notable failings) showed the interest but not the capacity. Peter David seems to use him as the butt of jokes a lot, yet at the same time shows a reverence for him that I find amusing. So I owe the writings of these gentlemen a huge round of thanks for any accolades that this story has received. I encourage anybody that is interested to pick up the writings of these gentlemen. In truth, this writing is mostly a way for me to reconcile who I understood STEVE ROGERS to be with the CAPTAIN AMERICA that is appearing in comics today. The redefined, dark and gritty Cap that everybody seemed to want for a while.

The decision to root the story in a definite period of time (during and shortly after the 2004 elections) is something that you can't really do in comic books. I decided to do it to make it seem more grounded in reality. Current events seemed to move the story along nicely as I could bottle a little bit of zeitgeist and pour it here and there. For those of you who realize (as I do) how absurd it is to put something as fantastic as Super Heroes and Villains in a normal-earth geopolitical situation and yet believe that they would remain powerless to affect things on the global stage... I thank you for suspending your disbelief. In exploring how the media and politicians would react to a personage such as Captain America it really helped me work out my own feelings about those institutions in my nation. For those of you who are offended by my portrayals of Steve's more "human" moments: Mistakes, foibles, failures and all... I apologize once again. In exploring Steve Rogers I could not deny his humanity, with all the good and the bad parts that humanity entails.

Let me list my good intentions here: I intended this story to be a perfect PG 13 action story with some dramatic elements. I intended for it to have 12 chapters (kinda like a 12 issue limited series) with a very defined arc. I intended to cameo a variety of heroes and villains more to show their thoughts and feelings for Cap than to do run of the mill hero stuff. I intended to have no arch nemesis or vast plot against him. I intended for the story to be more or less romance free. I intended for the focus of the story to be Cap's formative years during the Depression and World War two. I can actually see the point in my story where the road I built with good intentions led me into hell. How could I realistically show Steve's personal relationships without touching on his romances? How could I explore his war years by glossing over the horrors of war that he experienced? How could I do this entire story avoiding politics altogether? Moreover, who can resist a shadowy villain behind the scenes pulling the strings? After all, with all the things that seemed to be going bad for Cap it had to be SOMEBODY'S fault and I would be damned if it was going to be the Red Skull again.

I just hope that I didn't "Jump the Shark" too much.

In closing, I wrote most of this story during what little spare time I had during a combat tour in Iraq. I finish it now during a combat tour in Afghanistan. I wrote it in canon (or what I understood canon to be) without the benefit of access to any comic books or comic book news other than what I could learn from random buzz during my limited time on the internet. I know that I made mistakes here and there but I hope that these slip ups didn't take away any of your enjoyment of this story. Just like Cap… I'm only human. Thank you all again for reading this story and for posting your reviews.

I will forever be grateful.

SSGT David Shrauger

Sept 7th, 2008


End file.
